


A Lonely Rose In The Dark

by colorworld



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Adoption, Assault, BAMF Clara, BAMF Clara Starford Stark, BAMF Pepper Potts, BAMF Tony, BAMF Tony Stark, BFFs, Clara and Mei Xing are best friends forever, F/M, Foster Family, Foster Parents, I will CLEARLY WARN AND LABEL THAT CHAPTER!!!!, PLEASE dont read that chapter or this fic if you are uncomfortable with it!!!!, Parent Tony Stark, Protective Tony Stark, THERE WILL BE AN ATTEMPTED SEXUAL ASSAULT IN A FUTURE CHAPTER!!!!!, Tony Stark has a daughter, Tony Stark's Daughter, Tony and Pepper find his daughter, Voice recordings, bamf people, capsule hotel, foster sister - Freeform, he gotta find his daughter, if i misproperly warn or tag or anything PLEASE tell me!, inter country travel, it's a lonnngggg cross country trip, newly found daughter, not rudely but still do!, physical violence, ppl out to get my girl, this man will not stop until he finds his child, tony stark has a daughter he never knew about, we miss Nove Starford, we stan Clara Starford-Stark, will be mentioned upon occurence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-11-08 13:51:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 23,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17982281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/colorworld/pseuds/colorworld
Summary: Clara accidentally ends up playing the whole Volbeat playlist of hers, but she obviously isn’t bothered because they’re her favorite rock band. And Tony won’t admit it out loud, but he might have a competitor for his favorite music, himself. However, he is focused on the drive and the redhead teenager beside him who so happens to be his newly-super-powered daughter who drank a whole bottle of chocolate Nesquik in five minutes and is currently munching on Pringles.Unbelievable, but also unbelievably like him as a teenager.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> okay so will i finish this story whole, we dont know, but im gonna try, but il delete it in a few months if i dont. If you wanna keep it going, I highly highly appreciate reviews and comments and feedback! Thank you so much and I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Note: This whole first chapter is all OC, so if you want Tony content, it's not there until next chapter, so you prolly wont get the best first impression bc most people usually like their already canon characters???

“Hey, Daddy…It’s, um, January eighteenth, twenty-seventeen. They moved me again since I last recorded. I know I’m a burden, so it’s a shame I can’t go to college this year or I could be out of their hair. but I don’t exactly get to do what I want. I’m almost fluent in Mandarin, if that’s cool to you, I don’t know if it is…You’re Tony Stark, you probably wouldn’t even care if you knew I existed, you have too much other stuff to deal with in your life…Same boat, sir. Same boat…That’s pretty much it. I love you-if I ever end up…having a relationship with you. I guess it’s selfish and babyish, but I want to have a dad….Yeah.”

 

The recording memo of her quiet voice is done. 

 

She exits the app on her phone, letting the phone sit idle in front of her face on the edge of her bed. The girl is buried under her bed covers, her eyes barely peek out from under the comforter. Her body is warm, desperate for comfort. It’s still dark outside her window her bed is right up against. Even when day would rise, it would still be dark because of the storms that were going to happen today. Darkness shrouds everywhere. If it wasn’t in her head, it was surrounding her. It tended to usually be in her head and around her, though. It wasn’t abnormal. 

 

Her body leans up, back rolling and muscles awakening in a slow manner. The macbook beside her from the night before she grabs and opens, immediately turning down the brightness that assaults her eyes. She clicks the Duolingo website tab, checking her progress and starting a new lesson in silence. 

 

It’s been five minutes when the door opens feet away from her bed on the same wall. She doesn’t even turn her head to see who it is.

 

“You’ve been doing really well,” The girl at the door compliments in a low voice, closing the door behind her and coming to sit on the full bed beside her. 

 

“ Shì de, wǒ zhīdào.”  _ Yeah, I know. _

 

“Wǒmen yīnggāi kāishǐ wéi xuéxiào dǎbàn.”  _ We should probably start getting dressed for school. _

 

“Tiān a, wǒ gēnběn bùxiǎng qù,”  _ God I don’t wanna go at all  _ the auburn-haired teen groans. Her face feels dehydrated, motivating her to get up and go inside the bathroom connected to her room. When inside, she doesn’t turn on the light, starting the routine of revitalizing her face in darkness she’s so used to. 

 

“Kèlā lā, qíngkuàng bìng méiyǒu hǎozhuǎn?”

 

She looks up and blinks. She lost it this time.

 

“It’s not getting better, Clara?”

 

Clara turns her head back and finds her face cream, dotting a bit proportionately across her face. “I’m just tired, that’s all. It’s not that terrible, but I’m worried about my science grade. Jesus christ, I’m a S-”

 

The Chinese girl in her room has a crease around her brows. “What? What are you?”

 

Clara shakes her head. “Nothing, Mei Xing.” She’s glad she caught herself. “Tell me to be more thankful.”

 

“Why, Clara?”

 

Clara finishes her face and comes back out into her bedroom that is only lit by the fairy lights strung over her dorway. “I go to a private school, I have a great foster family-hell, I’ve had you and all these new better things, but why am I still the same that I’ve always been?” Her voice nearly raises. 

 

Mei Xing stands up from the bed. “Because that’s how pain works.”

 

“....Suppose so,” Clara whispers. She shakes her head. “Whatever, I’ll get dressed. Another day to live with, am I right?”

 

Mei Xing weakly smiles before she departs her foster sister’s room, leaving her sister to get dressed. 

 

Even as she’s getting dressed, there’s a line of thought growing in Clara’s head. It’s something she wants gone, but she feels so incapable of ridding of. Too many nice articles of nicer clothing than she’s ever had to be upset. White jeans and an intense royal blue scalloped shell are there to grab, so that’s what she’ll wear. She doesn’t even have to wear uniform to the school she goes to. 

 

Clara’s ready in another ten minutes with brushed teeth, makeup, and sprays of an expensive perfume she saved up for on her own. She brushes the long, straight auburn locks she’s never been willing to cut, there’s a pair of Ted Baker ruffle sneakers on her feat, she has a gold bangle on her right hand, her fingernails are freshly polished baby pink, and her skin is moisturized with Bath and Body Works body cream. When she looks in the mirror, she looks more gorgeous than she’s ever felt. 

 

So why does she still feel dark inside?

 

The thoughts hurt, so she leaves it at “stressed, but well dressed.”

 

Due to the fact she’s attempting to become more efficient, Clara packed her backpack the night before, so she was able to swipe up the gold-polka-dotted backpack from beside her room desk and exits her room to the apartment kitchen. It’s brightly lit, yet decorated simply. She can see it’s starting to rain heavily outside, as odd as it is. In Memphis, rain could happen in the morning, but in Arlington? How did it rain in Arlington, Virginia in the morning-especially heavily?

 

“Good morning,  qīn ài de.”  _ Good morning, dear darling. _

 

Usually, she smiles. This time, she accidentally didn’t. “Good morning, Ming Xia,” She pronounces her foster mother’s name in perfect Chinese pronunciation. 

 

“You’re learning,” She nods with the proud expression of a mother. “And you look beautiful.”

 

“Thanks,” Clara mumbles. Her attention turns away from Ming Xia to find a granola bar in the pantry. 

 

“I’m sorry I didn’t make you a breakfast, I was short on time-”

 

“Oh nonononono, you’re fine!” Clara sweeps around and immediately assures. “I’m actually not hungry enough for waffles or anything, anything, a granola bar is good.” She grabs a salted caramel almond bar, opening the wrapper and munching down the bar. 

 

The drive to school is short to the exterior of Alexandria. It’s pouring, but they brought rain jackets and umbrellas. Mei Xing is on her phone on the left of the car, but Clara is in the right back seat. She is doing absolutely nothing at all, eyes frozen to and through the stormy dawn. Inside of her, besides breathing, digesting, and more, her brain is in chaos, shooting ideas around, firing images she loves or she hates. Clara hears what she almost said earlier: Jesus christ, I’m a Stark and I can’t do science.

 

It didn’t matter that much, but she kept hearing it. 

 

If he were to know him, she wouldn’t be much like him. She was only good in math, pushed in science, but excelled in English, and taught herself Chinese for a long time that she can think almost all of her normal thoughts in the language. Yes, she is sarcastic and she finds herself at least somewhat intelligent, but her looks are impossibly Tony Stark’s. Her hair is red, her skin is fair, her nose is slightly his, the height of her body matches his, but not even her eyes are brown. They’re hazel green, occasionally a bit browner. She is absolutely her mother’s daughter, though. Matching facial features, a bit of a plumper body, the mild K.P on her upper arms that a lot of paler people endure. Her mom could really talk to people well and Clara thought she could at least talk a little. The woman could speak five languages and she aspired to do the same. So many traits and appearances to make of-it was making her brain swell, figuratively. She sees Tony Stark in her mind. There’s Tony Stark from when she was little, when he declared how he was a superhero, now. She sees images of him when the Avengers split and fought childishly in Leipzig. He hasn’t been seen in public since, Clara not knowing what to think of that. 

 

She could open the file, but she won’t. In this case, she couldn’t have her cake and eat it. 

 

School, oddly, wasn’t really that bad like it had been in the past. Clara had been a public school student her whole life until five months ago when Ming Xia and John Cheng, and that’s how she met her very best friend that Clara hoped she would be around for the rest of her life. Her past schools, though, mostly sucked. It wasn’t like she was bullied or abused or anything, but she would walk to school everyday, do the classes, sit at lunch, and even if she was doing nothing she felt drained when she arrived back to the orphanage building at the end of the day. Things were starting to look up now. She qualified for an honors English class since she had such practically perfect English grades in public school, the kids were somewhat nicer, and they offered Arabic classes that she quickly picked up on. Teachers seemed to care more, even her advisor, Mrs. Hall who was kinda young, but also seemed experience. At the moment, the only thing distracting her was the file in her backpack she kept everywhere she went, yet never opened since last year when she found it. It had the label. That’s all she needed.

 

The day was relatively mundane. Classes, more classes, a kid asks a question, another acts like an asshole, lunch comes with relative normalcy with Clara sitting quietly in a circular table with her foster sister next to her. These kids around her at school, for the most part, are just there, and she is something. Of course, she realized it was probably bad to think like that considering there could be people there thinking the exact same way she was. But, God, there was so much doubt on that. 

 

Some days are faster or slower than others. This day was smack-down in the very center of that range. Clara realizes this when she packs her backpack in an organized manner, putting earbuds in her ear connected to her Ebay-bought iPhone seven as she zipped her back up. The halls bustle, and she rushes to the stairs down to meet Mei Xing. Her smile is actually bright, lit up by freshly-white teeth as of recently (as disgusting as it was, the charcoal worked). She yanks her earbuds from her ears and pauses the music. “Hey, Mei Mei!”

 

Mei Xing rolls her eyes. “Your nicknames…”

 

“Something wrong, Princess Mei?” Clara smirks. “Manchurian Mei? Manatee-oh! Manatee Mei!” Clara points up. 

 

Mei Xing shakes her head as the two girls reach the bottom of the stairs. “No, I’m just thinking.”

 

“Thinking is my specialty. Maybe I can help you?” Clara inquires as she opens the door for Mei Xing. 

 

Mei Xing sighs. “I still don’t understand you from earlier.”

 

The duo stop as Clara furrows her brows. “This morning? Honey, that wasn’t anything, I swear I was just tired.”

 

Mei Xing hums. “Then what are you, then?”

 

It’s Clara’s turn to huff out a sigh. 

 

“What was the end of that sentence?” The inch-shorter-than-Clara’s five-foot-eight asks just as the breath finishes. 

 

The redhead’s eyes look around. “Ming Xia won’t be here for maybe another ten minutes, let’s go to the lounge.”

 

“Why?” Mei Xing’s tone is alarmed as her foster sister coaxes her along with a porcelain hand on Mei Xing’s leather-jacket-covered back. 

 

They walk through another hallway at the other side of the courtyard and they turn into an oddly empty student lounge with two sofas and some tables. Inside, however, is a private room, and that is where Clara figuratively drags Mei Xing and closes the door behind her. “ Nǐ xiǎng shuōhuà, hěn hǎo-”  _ You wanna talk, fine _

 

“Bullshit, Clara, you don’t need to talk Chinese and use it as an excuse for you trying to tell me stuff and leaving out the beef.”

 

“God, you’re so smart, I love it,” Clara laughs, but her expression normalizes with Mei Xing’s blazing eyes. Her eyes go to the side. “Sophisticated being is what I was going to say.”

 

“You’re so lying.”

 

“No I’m not, I’m generally sophisticated...But you’re right, it wasn’t what I was going to say...Okay, so I obviously don’t know who my parents are, right-aside from my dear, coma-stricken mom back in Dallas, bless her beating heart.”

 

“Clara,” Mei Xing is confused. 

 

“Mei,” Clara’s tone gains gravity. “Well, no, I do know who both of my parents are, except I’ve ignored the one who is actually still hoppin’ to the poppin’-or maybe not, god knows how that man is doing.”

 

Her confusion is deepening. Was this a mistake? “Cl-”

 

Clara puts her hand up in a ‘stop’ motion. She takes a breath. “Before I got the best family I’ve ever had, my independence led me to be able to actually find out my dad’s identity. Let’s just say it wasn’t easy, but it was just barely feasible enough. Back in Montana, there was this guy I found online who you’d pay a hundo to test you and find your parental correlation...Let’s just say mine wasn’t exactly convient,” Clara finishes in a quieter voice. 

 

“Clara,” Mei Xing intertwines her hand in Clara’s. “Who?”

 

Clara looks her best friend dead in the eye and replies, “ _ Tony motherfucking Stark _ ,” Clara pronounces clearly with a voice in between the facial epitome of “jesus christ”, “what has my life come to?”, and “I am fucked.”

 

Mei Xing is agape and bright-eyes wide open, her backpack is slipping off her body, phone loosening from her hand.  _ “No _ .”

 

“I paid him an extra hundred dollars for him to keep his mouth shut because I didn’t know what to do, but he got murdered the next week by a drive-by shooting on a trip to Arizona, so I’m the only one who knows I’m his daughter.”

 

Mei Xing has to sit down, finally, letting the bag down on the floor, but she sets her phone on the table. “Wh...And you know this for sure?” She asks with intense judgement in her voice. “Some guy online-”

 

“He had the most professional programming I’d ever seen, he let me watch the whole thing beginning to end, and he explained it to me! I don’t think he’s capable of being that good of an actor-he gave me a file too!” Clara explains. 

 

“A file?” Mei Xing raises her brows. “Then show me.”

 

“You wanna see the fucking file,” Clara pounds a clenched fist on the table. “Fine, I’ll show you the fucking file.” She whips her backpack from her shoulder to the table, unzipping it and swiftly yanking up the file packet, smacks the yellow manila folder on the desk. It’s stamped “confidential” and “Clara Rose Starford.”

 

Mei Xing looks at Clara and then at the packet, opening slowly with hesitance. When open, a world of information is thrown at her. She sees her name, her mom’s name, and her apparent biological father’s name. There’s pictures, birthdays, anything and everything through the pages. Her face is growing more stunned while Clara leans against a wall, looking up with a “praying to god” expression. 

 

Within a minute, she tidies up the packet and closes it. “You’re right...You’re half of him.”

 

Clara sighs. “Let’s just hope everyone else never finds out I’m half of him...I guarantee you, honey, he does not want or need a kid. Do I want a dad, yes… But not everyone gets what they want, do they?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony finds out about Clara and heads to her high school where it turns out she's been taken

His phone is ringing.

 

It hasn’t rang too much, recently.

 

Thankfully, Tony has the will to pick it up. “Hello? ...Nick-what the...Okay...And why are you telling me this? ...Nick, why am I supposed to be interested in the murder of a man on the way to Arizona from Montana? ...Files...of what?”

 

And that is the start of how Tony Stark is dragged to Red Lodge, Montana, just on the southern border of the state. Actual _fucking_ Montana where he might have been just once in his life.

 

He sees Coulson upon arrival, after learning he was definitely not dead from a certain man with an eye patch. Nick Fury was also there, dressed in his normal black clothes from head to toe, of course. The environment is chaotic around him, but no intimidation, necessarily. It’s investigation trade-off between the police and Shield. Tony takes note of the Shield officer having to convince the sheriff to let them handle this, but the poor sheriff is as confused as hell and looks too stern to let it go under the agency’s jurisdiction.

 

Tony sighs. “What’s this about, Nick? You barely gave me anything to work with on your out-of-the-blue phone call.”

 

“This Clara Starford girl-”

 

“Yeah, what about her?” Tony crosses his arms. He’s bored by Shield very easily, considering the relationship history between him and this agency. Their routine (or at least the one he’s seen) is too typical, tidy, uptight, and monotonous. Around him is something he has no deserved attention for.

 

Coulson beside Nick looks pretty nervous, and Tony’s eyes catch that with no effort as Nick shoves a yellow manilla folder against his chest.

 

Tony scoffs. “Nick, I don’t like being handed th-”

 

“You’re not going to care if you are being handed this or if I’m throwing it at you from twenty feet away,” He snaps sharply. “Read it,” Nick demands with blazing eyes.

 

The billionaire’s eyes roll just before he opens it up. His expression, little does he know, is going to change drastically within seconds because his dark-colored eyes are scanning the information with this rising sense of panic. “Nick, this is fake,” Tony states coolly.

 

“She may look absolutely nothing like you, Tony, but she is half you and half Nove.”

 

“How the hell do you know Nove?”

 

“She’s my goddaughter, Tony, I would know what’s up.”

 

He’s blinking rapidly at the eye-patch clad grump. “You’re a godfather? Holy shit-”

 

“Save it, Stark, we have things to work out, starting with how to find Clara.”

 

Tony shakes his head, still absorbing that Nick was actually a godfather. He was really the loner type, not imaginable to be anywhere near a child. “She’s not my daughter, therefore, this is just a sad police case because some family out there is missing their child-”

 

“She’s an orphan, Tony,” Coulson pops in for the first time, still a nervous expression, but it’s slightened down.

 

“First of all, I thought you were dead, second...she’s an orphan?” His eyes grow. Tony has to pause because the idea of piecing together the ideas of Nove Starford and dead are really fucking terrifying whether he’d ever admit that or not. “Nove’s dead?” His voice is quieter, lost of hope and his snarkiness.

 

“No. She’s been in a coma since Clara was four years old. They haven’t given up on her in Montana, but Shield is going to take custody of her and see if there’s anything we can do.”

 

Tony’s eyes shift around. Old love-of-his-life in a coma and, surprise, he had a daughter. It was just everything he needed, wasn’t it? Not.

 

“Nick, I think we found her,” A voice and body walks onto scene. She’s neutral to Stark’s appearance to the busy set where they had a teenager to find.

 

Tony hums before he speaks. “Back with Shield, Hill?”

 

“I never left, Stark,” Maria replies. She turns her attention to Nick. “She’s in Alexandria, Virginia with a foster family by the names of Ming Xia and John Cheng.”

 

“Fine, we’ll get there as fast as we can. There’s a lot to discuss.”

 

As the Shield agents are scrambling, Tony has to question again. “Are you sure that Clara Starford is my daughter?”

 

Nick looks at him. “If Clara wasn’t your daughter, you wouldn’t be here right now.”

 

Tony hums as Nick is off and away, left to stare at this file of his apparent daughter.

 

The news has predicted it for years, and they were right, but not how they would expect. Clara was not a daughter made of drunkenness or randomness, but of a lot of love. And that was one of the scariest parts about it.

  
  


She sees a suspicious man on the campus and that alarms her.

 

Clara’s looking at the man dead in the eye with no visible fear, standing tall and standing still. He’s obviously suspicious-and why? He’s staring at her back and he was staring at her in the first place. There are even people around, so what the fuck is he doing? If he was really out to get her, why would he be so public?

 

“Clara?”

 

Clara shoves her pocket knife up against her foster sister’s side discreetly. “Be careful,” She whispers before starting off. Who exactly would he be after except for her-the unknown bastard-ess of Tony Stark?

 

One fist is clenched, obviously, and the other’s empty. She needed to know her sister was going to be safe, so of course, she gave up the pocket knife. Considering she was at a gated private school, Clara was guessing minimal risks, but that pocket knife might just be the last thing she had between harm and normalcy, but her sister deserved that way more than her. It wasn’t her fault she was a high-priority target, but she would deal with the consequences of others because she needed to.

 

The man isn’t moving, even as she gets closer to him, not even when there’s only a few feet between him. He towers over her at maybe six-foot-three, but she’s only five-foot-eight. Obviously, this wasn’t her smartest move on the surface, but she had a powerful voice and she could use it in any way she liked, but it wasn’t just the way she liked. Clara had to be smart or in this moment could be the last time she knows or has heard of happiness. All of this runs through her head all at once, but you could never guess it was from the outside with a stoic stance and piercing eyes. “You wanna go inside, sir? It’s about to rain.” Her question and statement explain her peach rain jacket over her baggy peony-colored t-shirt and blue jeans.

 

“No. I don’t.” His accent sounds like a mixture of British and French, the oddest thing that Clara has heard. He looks relatively normal, though. Leather jacket, distressed jeans, but his build is bulky and monstrous to the eyes of many. To her, she just found it predictable.

 

“I suppose that just means mercenaries don’t mind the rain, huh? Or is it so personal that you could hear tornado sirens and you’d still be dragging me to your big black van over there? For what you’re after, you’re not really discreet.” Clara clicks her tongue when she finishes. “But you know what? Not here. How ‘bout you walk down the street outside of the school and I’ll meet you there. You wanna subject people to this? You wanna create a bigger chain of people who can identify you, describe you, spread the word about you? You’re walking into something you think is completely feasible, which it is, but it’s gonna come with side consequences. If they’re paying you a million dollars, even fifty because we both know what I’m worth because I have a superhero's name, you’ll have nothing to do with it because you’ll be in prison at La Sante? Souza Baranowski? ADX Florence is probably above you because you see, this is a potential crime in this very moment and a lot of things can go wrong. How about everything goes wrong, like, not on a private high school campus?”

 

The man can only stare at her because of this showing of no fear.

 

Clara hums. “Walk with me, buddy, it’s gonna get pretty cold in the rain.” They start to walk, the redhead accepting she may not see Mei Xing for a while, just a while because she has the self-esteem that not everything is as debbie-downer as it is in a cliche. It is at this very moment the gears in her head stop spinning because those were all just words. They weren’t actions.

 

Clara was fucked.

 

She spat actual saliva at him and kneed his privates while socking him in the nose, feeling the pain of an improper punch among impact. Clara attempts making a sprint for it, but her arm is harshly snatched and she is being dragged off. “A LITTLE HELP HERE?!” She screeches, but nothing is going good for her at the moment. Clara attempts dropping to the ground and wrestling her way out, but it’s no use because he just drags her back up again. She even forces her body up the best she can, even with a jiggle of her stomach and the t-shirt starting to reveal her porcelain area of extra fat, chomping down on his ear, but it’s not deterring him, which really makes Clara’s face utterly confused more than scared.

 

He finally drops her onto the floor of the van face-first, but she does not let her head slam the floor. Instead, she is fighting hard with any human instinct she has no matter how stupid it is, but it is useless.

 

That’s when she feels the jab.

 

That’s when she is not anger, she is not rage, but she is pain.

 

Clara is an explosion of pain.

  


_“Goddammit,” Maria mutters._

 

_Tony blinks. “What?”_

 

_“We’re getting word that something happened at Crestrose School at their high school campus just west of Alexandria. That’s where she goes to school, Stark.”_

 

Those are just words repeating in his head once he’s there.

 

It looks like a place that could be really happy, but it’s depressing because everything seems to be in full-on-mourning mode plus investigative chaos. Also, he doesn’t look discreet walking through hallways considering he’s Tony Stark, but at least he’s not in an Iron Man suit or anything. Just normal clothes, trousers, shirt, and a black leather jacket. Yeah, he draws some stares, but some others just don’t appear to care.

 

Just outside of an office, he spots her: a girl with a shroud of glossy black hair whose knees are tucked in and he just barely hears a noise of crying.

 

Tony swallows. He’s not the best with crying, but he tries, and he will try. “Hey?”

 

She quickly lifts her head up just enough to wipe away her tears, trying not to look too ugly in front of a billionaire who has a chance of being condescending. Her face is now visible.

 

“Um...You’re her sister, right? Mei Xing Cheng.”

 

“Yeah,” Mei Xing’s voice is groggy.

 

“Well, um...I don’t know if you know-”

 

“She told me yesterday...If you know?”

 

“I know.”

 

“Oh.”

 

At this moment, it appears that Tony has a weakness. “You should get up, maybe get some water, take a deep breath? It could make you feel better,” He tries. He’s not a therapist, considering his own anxiety attacks and PTSD, but a man can try to help out a crying teenage girl who misses her sister who so happens to be his daughter, right?

 

Mei Xing nods. “I’ve tried that...Nothing beats the pain.”

 

“Oh.”

 

Mei Xing breathes in and out deeply before she speaks again, but she can’t look at him. “When did you find out?”

 

“Hours ago. Shield brought me out to where some guy was murdered in relation to...well, her.”

 

“And why are you here?” Mei Xing finally forces her head up, but immediately regrets her blurt of a question, afraid to face an odd expression or something.

 

His expression isn’t odd in the slightest, or condescending like she couldn’t keep off the table of what he could be like. Instead, he is in the simplest form of confusion because he doesn’t exactly know why he’s really here when he thinks about it. Tony does come up with something he does speak his word on, though. “She’s my daughter...If I can find her, I will. This is just the first step.”

 

Mei Xing just nods because she is surprised by his response. It was sincere and was outright really caring. It was the second biggest shock of the day behind her sister getting kidnapped-plus her being the one to confront him.

 

“You sure you don’t want some water, kiddo? I’m sorry, I don’t know how to help crying teenage girls, but I’m just a man in a can-not even always in the can,” Tony explains with pretty much a bit of sheepishness at the end.

 

Mei Xing shakes her head. She’s decided to get up, but the man offers a hand to help her just as she does. As perplexed as she is, she takes it and is then back on her feet facing a superhero billionaire who happens to be her foster sister’s father.

 

Her mouth and face is silent, but her brain is having multiple explosions and mini seizure-like breakdowns because does she say what she wants to say or does she not? Her confidence is stagnant but then takes a slow highway to where it’s good enough to say something. “Can I ask you something with a fully honest answer? I mean, like, I understand if you don’t want to-”

 

“No, kiddo, it’s okay. What do you wanna ask?”

 

Mei Xing swallows. “Is she a burden?”

 

All Tony can see in his head is a back-and-forth between Nove Starford under the sunlight at a beach and a simple profile picture of Clara Starford-Stark. Nove, then Clara, Nove, then Clara. There is so much beauty and intelligence and joyfulness in the images he sees of her mother that he has the confidence to say, “No. She’s not a burden.”

 

“Mr. Stark?” A woman’s voice asks, drawing him to inside an office to discuss all these things with school admin, police, Shield, whoever was crowding this room so they can find his daughter he never knew about. At first, it’s just some pleasantries, but then one of them puts an apple watch on the table. “Mei Xing found it on the concrete ground feet from where Clara was. It had just finished some recording taken at the time she was being taken,” One woman explains before playing the voice memo.

 

_“You wanna go inside sir, it’s about to rain...No…I suppose that just means mercenaries don’t mind the rain, huh? Or is it so personal that you could hear tornado sirens and you’d still be dragging me to your big black van over there?”_

 

He’s lost inside her voice as it goes on to the very finish, a voice that’s almost familiar to him. It’s pleading, it’s sacrificial, it’s practically him. She gave herself away before anyone else had the chance to get hurt, and all Tony hears is telling Pepper to press the button, him flying up into space, him exploding the chunk of Sokovia. That may be the most terrifying part of this story, so far.

 

“Did she know he was coming?” Some man asks.

 

“Who knows,” the woman who called him in replies. “Are we able to track the voice of the man?”

 

Tony nods. “Yeah, I can do that.”

 

“Principal Artner and Dean Kavey, thank you for your time, but Shield can handle this under our jurisdiction, now,” Nick settles.

 

“All due respect, sir, we want to know what happened to our student,” The Dean buts.

 

“I understand, but you don’t have to do anything else. This isn’t just a small-town investigation. It’s bigger than that.”

 

“Why, because of him?” The principal gestures to the billionaire in an almost rude manner.

 

“Among other things, yeah,” Tony murmurs with an unintended sense of guilt to the ears. He wasn’t phased by any of them, he knew it was obviously his fault.

 

“We’re done here,” Nick states before things could gain hostility. The Shield group quickly gets outside of the door, Tony the last. He is almost gone when the dean says something:

 

“She’s a really good kid...One of the very best.”

 

Tony turns around to face the older woman, even though there’s a bit of distance. “I knew her mom... I never doubted it.”

  
  


 

The pain’s been over for some time, so she’s still acting like a complete animal just for some chance she can escape this.

 

It’s warm, but not disastrously warm. The only reason she’s sweating some is that she’s been fighting for so long. Clara sighs. “Hey, Paolo from Princess Diaries, do you have makeup wipes before the foundation clogs my pores to death?”

 

The bald man just stares at her before blankly asking “Paolo?”

 

“Damn, you’ve never watched Princess Diaries? Anne Hathaway, Julie Andrews? Chris Pine was cute in the second one, but you need to see him in Star Trek: Beyond because holy shit, he was handsome as he-”

 

“Shut up!” He yells.

 

“Fine, whatever!” She yells back at the same level of volume. “I mean like, Karen Gillan in Doctor Who is, like, super beautiful, and same with, uh, what’s her na-Jenna Coleman who plays the twelfth doc’s companion-also, like, super pretty! Oh my god, have you watched NCIS with Ziva David-she and Tony Dinozzo are amazing-wait, you haven’t seen Sam Seaborn in West Wing, oh my god-”

 

“Quiet!” Another voice screams.

 

“I won’t be quiet for anyone!” Clara shouts. “You can kidnap me, beat me, try to kill me time and time again, except I’m just really hard to kill, so you’re gonna keep exerting every fiber of energy you have and you will fail!” She shrieks.

 

“You sure about that?”

 

Clara blinks, turning her head to a dark void. God, she hasn’t even been paying attention to what exactly she’s in or where she is. “Funny how I know that voice.”

 

She is kicked to the ground and she screams in fury upon impact. So the man in front of her lifts her chin up and Clara growls practically like a jaguar, her body an epitome of fury and rage.

 

“Hello, Miss Stark,” Says Obadiah Stane.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah i know a very rndom unrealistic twist but its what im doing so 
> 
> Hope you liked! Comments and kudos are incredibly appreciated! Thank you for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony's drowning in guilt while trying to find his daughter + snarky, funky superb 'lil bisexual teenager Clara won't shut. the. fuck. UP.

Clara blinks. “Hey, Obie, Obie boy, aren’t you supposed to be, like,  _ dead _ , as of November twenty-fourth, two-thousand-nine? Instead, you’re, like, alive, so you have some stuff to run down by me,” She states. “Also, nice facial scars, those look like they hurt.”

 

Obadiah is not saying anything or moving for a very long moment, so the redhead teen takes that time to observe him. His body looks banged up, but mostly his face. Where used to be just his bald head is now red-and-nude scarring, one of the individual scars is practically bulbous from his head which Clara finds peculiar as much as being kidnapped by a dead man in the first place. 

 

The teenager takes a breath. “You’re wondering how I know exactly about how you died. I’ve learned a skill set very, very well. Kinda like how you’ve learned the skill of not dying. Electrocution hurts, right? I can’t really see it not kill, you, though...I swear to god, why the fuck are you alive after giving weapons to terrorists and nearly killing Tony Stark?”

 

Obadiah sighs. “I had an insurance...only I knew about it. I may have not been able to replicate your father’s arc reactor, but I was able to do other things no one knew about. In case of death, there’s a device that jump starts everything back up, heart, lungs, and it has a certain chemical that stabilizes the resuscitation process.”

 

“Soooooooooo where you been for the past eight years, buddy? Drowning in despair, perhaps?”

 

“No. I was alive but in a coma.”

 

“Good. You deserved it. You could’ve killed a lot more people than you did because of your stupid ass.”

 

“Do me a favor and try to break out of that chair.”

 

Clara squints her eyes. “Are you  _ fucking  _ crazy, I could just kick your ass right when I’m free-”

 

“Then do so...Just try it.”

 

“There is actual duck tape on my wrists,” Clara growls, but she starts to wriggle and her fists are tightening into clenching.

 

That is the exact second she sees the blue glow. 

 

She sees it from both hands, snapping her head back and forth between them, more light seeping out. “What the hell did you do?” Clara whispers. 

 

There’s a breaking. 

 

The glowing, electric light bursts all up her body from head to toe, the rope, duck tape, and handcuffs are gone.

 

Her body is forced onto her feet with her head jerked back by the raw power of the new ability. The men around her feet the wood surrounding them rattle and have to cover their ears at the growing scream of both the girl and the power’s maximum. 

 

It stops and Clara’s body drops hard onto the floor, hands on the dusty wood. She’s uncontrollably gasping and finding the bodily strength to lift one hand to see the pure power of blurred electric blue. That’s all it is.

 

“You plan to use me, don’t you?” Clara asks. She’s going to lean upwards herself, but she’s yanked back by the hair and something is pressed to her neck and left there. 

 

“I’m still thinking about it.”

  
  
  


 

He had no way to know what exactly happened to his daughter and that was utterly terrifying. 

 

Tony didn’t know her, but she was the spitting image of her mother, a woman he used to love like he does Pepper (absolutely more than anything that exists), who has all of her mother’s intellect and charm. She is only a child who’s never had a mother or father, probably horrified for her life. But then again, she was the one who strolled right up on the man and told him she would let him take her, but only if not on campus. 

 

It was so much of him that it hurt.

 

It was so much of him, and even Nove, that if he could, he’d never let her be that sacrificial ever again. 

 

Tony sighs. That’s a very dad-like thing to think of in that manner. He’s not a dad, and he knows that Clara deserves so much better. But then again, she never had parents in the first place, and he blamed himself. He should’ve figured better when his girlfriend started throwing up, acting weird, then dropped off the face of the Earth. He had been devastated, but he moved on, somehow. Except Clara would never get to move on and it made him infuriated. 

 

His body feels blank. What is he supposed to do for her? He’s just a forty-eight-year-old-man who’s done terrible things and has seen many horrors. Tony is a man who sees blood on his hands that isn’t there, looking up to see the daughter of an incredible woman he once loved, a daughter who deserved the world and more. Never in her life would this beautiful girl deserve a broken man like him.

 

Never in Pepper’s life did she deserve a chaotic disaster like him. 

 

Hell, he didn’t deserve either of them. They were both too amazing. They shouldn’t waste their greatness on him. 

 

He needs to know where she is before something worse happens to her than it already has. 

 

What happened to her, he doesn’t know, but assuming the worst is always the best policy. 

 

Tony pulls himself together, or at least attempts to with weak sewing skills of a little girl making herself a doll because she can’t buy a good one. He’s gotta wake up, he’s gotta work hard, he’s gotta find her because her precious blood is on his hands if he doesn’t, and more blood should never be spilled for an innocent, amazing girl. 

 

_ “There is an incredible young girl out there who is your daughter whose getting hurt because of you. You have to find her,”  _ the thought floods Tony’s head. 

 

He and Friday have their head-gears spinning as fast as they can possibly work them. They and everything they can make search look high and low for hits and signals, unusual sightings and odd entities. Any of it can be connected or correlated in such a potentially massive case he and Shield are looking at. There is a girl out there with the last name “Stark” being held hostage. Of course, it’s a massive fucking issue and case. 

 

“Boss, there was a strange energy signature detected over Grenora, North Dakota. I relate it a lot to the likes of Miss Maximoff’s abilities as well as The Vision’s,” Friday reports within eight minutes. 

 

Perfect. “Are you saying we have another Mind-Stone powered?”

 

“No, the signature appears to be incredibly electric...And it’s displayed at much a greater magnitude than Miss Maximoff or The Vision’s display of their powers.”

 

“What difference?”

 

“Ten thousand joules more.”

 

“Holy shit,” Tony whispers. That is way more powerful than two people who have Mind-Stone derived abilities. What the fuck is going on in such a minuscule place in North  _ fucking Dakota _ ?

 

He sighs. “Tell Nick for me. They’re gonna wanna send a team up there if there’s anything else supporting that it could be Clara.”

 

“On it, Boss.”

 

“Do you know what kinda structure it comes from, Fri?”

 

“It...It appears to be a boxcar, boss. An abandoned boxcar,” Friday replies in a perplexed manner, matching her boss’s face. “I also just got a vocal match. It took a while.”

 

“Who is it?” Tony leans back in his seat. He is exhausted, yet disheveled, yet his eyes are pretty dark.

 

“Jeremy Francois-Whickham. Dual citizen of France and Great Britain. He’s had Interpol on him for years, but no hits. MI-6 and La Sûreté have been tracking him for years, as well. He’s supposedly a highly well-known mercenary in his business, as well as a highly-skilled assassin. We’re talking Natasha Romanoff level skill.”

 

Considering how professional and perfect Natasha is at what she can do, that does really heighten Tony’s fear. “Who has he worked with?”

 

“Anyone from drug cartels, crime syndicates, rogue agents of foreign governments, anyone who will pay him well. There’s word of him anywhere from India, The Philippines, South Africa, Hungary, and Moldova. He is no secret, but his whereabouts are.”

 

“Still didn’t answer my question in specifics, Fri,” Tony reminds in an irritated tone he doesn’t really mean once he’s realized how he said that. 

 

“Sorry, Boss.”

 

“You’re fine, Fri,” Tony apologizes. 

 

“He’s worked with someone that…”

 

Tony blinks and leans forward. “What is it, Fri? Tell me, honey,” He urges the A.I.

 

“Francois-Whickham is working frequently with someone who is connected to Obadiah Stane.”

 

“God,” Tony immediately spits out. He’s disgusted, filled with twice the rage than he already has, which is a shitload. He sees the closest thing he had to a father rip his life support out of his chest, claiming it as a goose’s golden egg. If the aftermath of Obadiah means taking and maybe killing his daughter…

 

He swallows, finally semi-collecting himself. “Who?”

 

“Red Rose. MS-13 size with small-town gang strength for most of them. Not for Francois-Whickham and whoever he’s working with,” Friday responds. “Red Rose is practically ghostly, but they’re known to leave a single stripe of red spray paint in places they operate.”

 

“Is there one on the boxcar?”

 

Friday shows a closer satellite image. “Yes.”

 

Tony bangs his fist on the desk. “Our girl’s probably there.”

  
  
  


 

Clara blinks. “You have, like, cable or something? Hey, Buffy Boy, put on Princess Diaries, I can show you who Paolo is! He, like, gave Mia the biggest glow-up of her life and she looks like an absolute goddess, like, wow-”

 

The bald, super tall man punches his whole hand through the wood, no light coming in because it’s the middle of the cold night. 

 

“Fine, I don’t need cable. I mean, like, it’s based off a book. I can describe him. He’s bald and ugly like you, but shorter. He has his two lady sidekicks and he has an accent. I forgot where he’s from-he might be Italian. Yeah he’s Italian. Did you know that according to him that Italian men love, like, really love babies-”

 

The man decided to step on her foot. 

 

“OWOWOWOWO  _ OW! _ ” Clara screeches in agony. “FUCK YOU, DIPSHIT, FUCK YOU!” 

 

“You’re vocal like your mom.”

 

It hurts to turn her head so far, but she does anyway. “Don’t talk about my mom,” Clara snarls. “You don’t deserve to hear of such a wonderful woman.”

 

“She never got to raise you.”

 

“She’s gonna come back for me! I believe in happy endings!”

 

“Happy endings?” Obadiah chuckles. He points his own finger to his worst scar. “Does this look like a happy ending?”

 

“No, it looks like you fucked up because you’re a worthless piece of shit,” Clara fires back, looking at him from head to two in two eye twitches. 

 

“ _ TONY STARK  _ IS A WORTHLESS PIECE OF SHIT!” Obadiah bellows. 

 

“Tony Stark is at least five times the man you are because he is the type of man who sacrificed himself to kill you, sacrificed himself to a wormhole in space to save nine million plus people, was  _ willing _ to sacrifice himself in the line of fire to blow up the floating Sokovia chunk!” Clara screams. She stomps her foot so hard to the ground that it hurts, but why should she care with this conversation. “Tony Stark sacrifices himself time and time again and if he makes a mistake, you see the guilt-the goddamn painful guilt in his eyes-maybe he sees blood in his hands whether it’s there or not! For all I know, maybe he has trauma issues because when I see him on tv, I see this excruciatingly exhausted man and you just know that he wants it to stop! Tony Stark sacrifices his life, his hopes, his dreams if he has any left because this world has killed them for the little people in this world who can do nothing! You, on the other hand, you, a son of a bitch, you sacrifice anyone of any value but yourself!”

 

“God, I hate this little bitchy Stark,” He whispers to himself. 

 

“I won’t be a Stark by the time I see him because I know he doesn’t want a daughter.”

 

Obadiah shakes his head with smugness. “You know him much less than you think you do, Miss  _ Stark _ . Because you are here instead of your Alexandria apartment, Tony feels guilty and he feels responsible for you now that you’ve been hurt.”

 

“Well, he’s gonna realize that I am just not what he needs-I don’t think  _ anyone  _ suddenly needs a daughter that they didn’t know about for fourteen years,” Clara retorts. 

 

Obadiah clicks his tongue, practically a mocking of what the redhead teen does. “No, but he will throw all thought of that off the table because do you know what he’s built up over the past eight years-you named it yourself...He built up guilt.”

 

Her eyes are freezing Antarctic ice, and the ice is dark. “I am not worth it.”

 

Obadiah steps closer, putting his hands on the top of the chair by her shoulders, Clara’s face growing more disgusted. “You are very worth it, and I think you know why...You are Tony Stark’s beautiful biological daughter, and that is worth a lot more than you know.”

 

“I know my worth and I set my worth, not someone who thinks they’re gonna rule the world one day, that’s not how I let this end.”

 

Obadiah ignores what she says since he thinks otherwise. “You are a pretty young woman, though, let me tell you.” He slides his hands down to her hips and actually has a perplexed expression. “Fat?”

 

She spits in his fast and uses her fist to knock him hard on the left side of his head, and he is groaning in pure pain as she speaks. “Touch my body like that and the hole you’ve been digging is gonna get bigger! Maybe I’ll add some spikes inside just to make a point!”

 

Obadiah just laughs. “Don’t plan to, but such a weak threat for a weak little girl.”

 

“Says the man who just gave this,” Clara cocks her head in a deadly manner, “little girl one of the most powerful abilities on the planet.”

 

“Says the girl who is controlled by me, and only me,” Obadiah smirks. He’s still leaning over her, his breath creepily close to Clara’s lips, instigating the teenager to never let down the ice-cold expression, but there’s also a burning wildfire in her eyes. She is rage in both ways, and that is something you should never face in someone. 

 

“Not for long,” She growls like the calm before the storm, the tiger behind its prey preparing for pounce, the voice low and deathly. 

 

Obadiah hums. “So you think. When one of the men I hired is finally done with the fucking formula he promised would be done sooner...You are mine permanently. You won’t be the Winter Soldier...You’ll be far worse than him.”

 

Clara’s face is still straight with the purity of anger and all its friends, even as her hands are faintly glowing.

 

Once again, the older man chuckles. “You are already worse than the Winter Soldier and all his buddies. And that is because you aren’t Hydra’s creation. You are  _ mine _ .”

 

Her eyes are definitely squinted, feeling very cliche like a stupid movie. “And what exactly would that be? Blow up the world, or something stupid? Kill everyone at Shield?” She inquires mockingly. 

 

Obadiah looks her dead in the eye. “Kill your father...Maybe the Avengers.”

 

Clara sighs, actually smirking. “Yeah, no, that’s not on my to-do list for my life, so let’s, like,  _ not _ .”   
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried. :/ . if you liked, kudos and comments are highly appreciated and im open to constructive criticism! Thank you for reading!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony and the Shield team think they find something, but they don't, except for someone who may be involved. However, Nick finds something else Tony needs to hear.

When Tony, Nick, Maria, and four companion Shield agents arrive on scene during a particularly white-clouded day on the west border of North Dakota, a place desolate of life except maybe twenty people in a fifty-mile radius, the boxcar is as abandoned as anyone on Earth would’ve guessed. 

 

His face is absolutely crestfallen, Clara nowhere to be found. There is only a chair and a few blast marks. He can’t even catch sight of details because who cares what else is here-his daughter isn’t. 

 

“We were wrong. It’s deserted,” Maria deadpans. She spots burnt-to-crisp rope and what appears to be silver duck tape just as burnt. Around it, though, seems to be soaked-in liquid with a blue tinge. The woman kneels over and observes it. “Dunno what this is, but...it’s...glowing?”

 

Tony is too distracted to come to look for himself. He sees his daughter, but he doesn’t even see Clara in front of him. He sees her in his head. She’s suffering somewhere and he wasn’t right there to save her. Clara is an innocent young girl. This is not what she is supposed to have. She is supposed to have better. 

 

His head spins with stress. He can’t calm, he feels it in his beating heart that his cortisol is probably skyrocketing. There is a girl out there that is his that is hurting. He doesn’t know her, he doesn’t deserve her...But because he is a man with a name and actions that made him worse, she pays the price she isn’t supposed to pay. 

 

Tony sees her, not Clara, but Nove. She is Pepper, but she is not Pepper at all. At one point, she was Pepper’s equivalent. He would look at her and at that very moment in time, there is nothing else. There is only this woman that is the world. She is the world and he just lived in it. The best world there was. The only problem is that it’s gone. It’s okay, though. Pepper is her, too. It isn’t because she feels so similar, at all. He loves Pepper because she is his world, now, always and forever. His heart is hers. 

 

His heart was only ever meant to be for her. 

 

“Tony...Tony?”

 

It takes a little too long to be normal for Tony to snap out of it. He clumsily spins around and the face of Nick’s is absolutely unheard of. It’s petrified just as bad as Tony feels inside but he can never show it. 

 

Tony’s steps are slow and terrified. It’s a paper with its writing sloppy, but legible, and its words mean so much it’s not worth caring about anything. 

 

_ I was wrong, Tony. _

 

_ You had another golden egg to give _

 

_ Obie _

 

Tony Stark could not breathe. 

 

“God,” He gasps. His throat and chest feel like coughing, hacking, vomiting, something he doesn’t know what to think of because he has a bigger concern. Obadiah is alive and has his daughter, and if he didn’t get her back, he was going to lose his motherfucking mind.

 

Tony turns and stumbles out of the boxcar, a lot like he did at a bar with Rhodey in Los Angeles. He feels horrible, like, beyond horrible. His body just feels so  _ bad _ . Stretched, strained, agonized, all of it highly sustained. Everything is nothing, Clara and Obadiah the only two entities of existence. His mind is stress’s epitome, and even the stars above are mourning that. 

 

His world has shrunk to two things: one is pure light, one is raw dark. 

 

Daughter. Obadiah. 

 

His daughter. Obadiah Stane. 

 

One is hurt. One is  _ hurting  _ her. 

 

His fault, his fault, hisfaulthisfaulthisfault. 

 

Clara is hurting, Clara is in pain, Clara could be dying. 

 

All of his fault, his fault, and his alone. 

 

Tony is not quite aware of what exactly he’s doing, but he kinda sees his left hand grappling onto a long thing of metal apart of the boxcar. At the middle of his head is Pepper, vibrant-god, he needs her-at minimum, he wants her. At the front is a bloody, bruised Clara that might as well be exactly that in reality. 

 

Had he really lost it?

 

Obadiah is alive, the bastard is alive and he gave himself up to kill him, and did it mean nothing? Tony didn’t know, for sure, everything felt blurry with the powerful surge of emotion that made what he gets the feelings-boost from something he doesn’t see so clearly anymore. He is so emotionally-charged that he isn’t so sure why he’s feeling everything on his body and soul at once. 

 

It’s taking a few minutes of just being on the outside, but he doesn’t realize it. Time is fleeting, but he’s coming back. Tony’s coming back, now, on North Dakotan grass by a boxcar having a smashed glob of anxiety and panic plaguing him at the same time. 

 

It’s Siberia. 

 

It’s Siberia on the inside again. 

 

Tony’s gaining it back, slowly, but surely. If anyone can do it, he can. He does it time and time again, but never does he stay down forever. This man gets back up whether he comes back standing tall or not. 

 

His breaths are stabilizing, even if it takes time. It’s a little cold outside on his body, considering it was one of the northernmost states in the whole country, as well as one of the emptiest. When Tony finally has the will to push himself back up onto his feet and to face the other way, Nick is standing there looking practically impatient. “Are you done?”

 

Tony’s pretty much flabbergasted. “Am. I.  _ Done _ ?”

 

Nick nods with a straight face. A breeze lifts his dramatically-black trench coat just a bit. 

 

He just laughs, but it’s more like a gasp-still-trying-to-get-a-hold-of-its-own-breath-laugh. It’s low and breathy, setting the stage for what’s to come. “Obadiah Stane is alive and he is holding someone innocent hostage-”

 

“Tony-” Nick tries futility.

 

“And people have been getting hurt all around me since I flew out of that cave eight years ago-do you think I’ve ever been done? Done is I don’t care. As surprising as you’re gonna find it, I do care and I never stop.” Tony’s voice is angrier than Nick has heard in a long time. He practically growled at the end of his sentence. 

 

“You have to stop if you’re going to find her,” Nick coldly counters. 

 

Tony deeply sighs through his nose. “You’re? You’re right, Nick, it is just ‘you’re’. I’m going to find Clara myself,” He shakes his head and is going the other way. He had the will to yell, but he did not have the will to stomp. Fury was somewhat right, though. He needed to find her and not have an attack. But the way he phrased it just made him mad, maybe wrongfully so. 

 

“You need something.”

 

Tony turns around. “What the fuck could I need, Nick?”

 

“We tracked down something off of Clara’s phone I think you should hear...It’s irrelevant, but you just probably want to.” Nick takes a few steps towards him and hands him a phone with a huge collection of voice memos. “You might wanna go listen to it in the car.”

 

Tony’s eyes harsh with fury, but he snatches the phone away from him and decides he’ll do what Fury recommends. He sighs and feels like a mixture of either banging his fist on the dashboard or just screaming. Instead, he looks at the date of the very first recording: October fifth two-thousand-eight. 

 

He’s perplexed. That is when Clara is only six years old, so he doesn’t know exactly what could be recorded that matters. Is it something that Nove said? Something Obadiah said, somehow?

 

Tony sighs, leans his head back with fear and listens, prepared for the absolute worst. For all he knows, this could be a death message, a suicide tape. 

 

_ “Hi, Daddy,”  _ Is a voice small, youthful, precious as a six-year-old. 

 

A gap grows between his lips. 

 

_ “I don’t know if I ever get to meet you, so I decided I could make recordings so that you kinda do meet me. My name is Clara. My middle name is Rose. I dunno why. Maybe my mommy liked roses.” _

 

An image is sparked of one time when Tony does get Nove roses and some women do like roses, some don’t. He was in luck, though, because he remembers her saying that vibrant red roses are her favorite. 

 

_ “My favorite color is pink and I really like puppies. Can I get a puppy if I ever meet you? I dunno. I hope so. If not, maybe I can get a bunny. Bunnies are really cute. My foster mom and dad won’t let me have a bunny or puppy. They say it’s a lot of work. That’s okay. I’ll get one one day. Bye!” _

 

Tony just blinks and taps the next one.

 

The next. 

 

The next. 

 

The next. 

 

He’s not thinking, he’s listening and tapping. Clara’s voice is growing slightly older, matching the dates as they pass through time. It’s always one more recording, sometimes on the same day. She does them daily, overall. They’re adding up, but he doesn’t care how many there are. Tap, tap, tap again, tap. 

 

But then, there’s crying on June eighteenth of two-thousand-twelve. Clara is ten. 

 

_ “Hey, Daddy. Bad dream...I had a bad dream. Mom was hurt-not my foster mom, my real mom. I’ve seen pictures of her and heard about her and I remember her...but I don’t remember her that much but I really miss her. Too bad a superhero like Iron Man wasn’t there to save her. Iron Man would’ve saved her.” _

 

Tony feels like scoffing, but he feels like a strange cocktail of having teary-eyes and the feeling to definitely not scoff about a little girl’s words. She’s not even little, anymore. 

 

_ “Or you...Don’t husbands save their wives? You would’ve saved mom, right? You’re not Iron Man, but you would’ve saved her, right?” _

 

He would’ve. 

 

For some reason, he hears more tears and crying. _ “I want a hug...My foster parents don’t really give hugs. I just need, like, a big bear-hug...I need my mom...I need my dad, wherever he is.” _

 

The breath Tony exhales is shaky and he swallows. This was really depressing. 

 

He listens to more, obviously. As time goes on, though, there always seems to be five in a year that are sobbing and crying, begging for a hug she will never get. Even when she is eleven and twelve, she is still addressing her father as “Daddy”. Her voice is growing more womanly by the time she is thirteen and she’s probably starting to look like the girl she is today.

 

Then, he hears one recording and her emotion is unlike any other. 

 

_ “You’re fucking Tony Stark.” _

 

His heart skipped a beat or two. It’s what he’s guessing to be an ocean of shock, disgust, something like that. 

 

_ “I...I don’t know what to think of that. God, I don’t know...I’m not going to see you or meet you. You don’t want me, you don’t want or need a kid, and I get that. Honestly, I don’t think anyone needs a kid they didn’t know about. I guess I continue these recordings for tradition. It has no purpose...I just do it to do it? It’s alright, though. I can live without you. I will get a job-well, I already work in newspaper since they allow me to work at thirteen in California, Fresno, specifically. When I turn fourteen, though, I can work fast food in some places, or I can work as a cashier, I dunno. I’ll do anything for money, practically. I pay for anything I need, most of the time if it’s not food or my phone or stuff like that. I want a nice blouse, but it’s fifty bucks, I’ll pay for it. Makeup? Save and pay for it. I swear if I need a fucking bra, tampons, school supplies, I have to pay for it. I’m always going to do that because I can’t depend on anyone. Hell, when I try to apply to Georgetown, UCF, the zero-point-two chance I could go to Yale, University of Texas Dallas, somewhere I wanna go, I’m going to have to work my ass off to live and go there. It’s not likely I’ll get a full scholarship. I’m smart and all, but full? No. Definitely not.” _

 

Tony doesn’t care that he feels teary-eyed after every single thing he’s heard throughout all of her recordings. 

 

_ “I promise to never bother you, I swear. I promise never to ask you for money, a home, food, anything. I’ll never pull ‘I’m Tony Stark’s daughter’ shit anywhere for anything. There is no reason for me to. I am my own individual. God, do I want a parent? Of course, I do. I don’t get to have that, though. My name is Clara Starford, never to be Clara Stark. I promise you I won’t bother you.” _

 

“God, Clara... _ God _ ,” Is all Tony can just barely whisper out. To him, it doesn’t have to be like that. He’d be happy to help her pay for college, food, clothes, anything she needed, he didn’t care. This kid deserves the world-it was Nove’s daughter, and she seemed like a great young girl. It was his responsibility, anyways, he’s officially a father with a daughter and it is not a problem to provide for her. If she just came and talked to him a year ago when she found out, it would’ve all been fine, but now she’s kidnapped and now she could die. 

 

_ “Maybe there’s another dad for me out there. Obviously, not biological, but adoptive? Who knows? I don’t know. I wanna know...I wanna know when I can be happier. I try my hardest, that’s why I try hard to make friends and join clubs, but it’s not helping enough yet...And I don’t wanna become depressed. I can’t...Depressed kids don’t go to the Ivy League schools. And, you know, I’m generally confident in my abilities, I could do it! Will I? I don’t know.” _

 

The recording is over. 

 

Tony doesn’t play the next one yet. There is only silence, he can’t hear his breathing because it’s barely there. 

 

He’s gone. 

 

He pounds his fist against the armrest beside him over and over quickly. “I would’ve  _ HELPED  _ YOU!” Tony yells, purely mad and afraid, also alone. Yeah, Pepper was back at the compound waiting for him, but in this very moment, he is physically alone. Mentally, he sees Clara sob, he sees Clara injured, he sees Clara dying. He sees a tiny Clara when she is six. He sees older Clara when she is thirteen. The difference and what bad it brings is a tragedy of the ages. 

 

Again does Tony swallow, teary-eyed from his emotional hurricane. He wipes them away and sighs, feeling the extra weight in his left arm and how his body is drenched in his own anxiety, agony, petrification, anything, and everything. 

 

He must blur the silence. He plays the remaining recordings. 

 

“Boss, I found a lead,” Friday reports ten minutes later after he finishes the very last recording. “...Boss?”

 

Tony blinks, the quiet disturbed. “Yes?”

 

“I have a lead.”

 

Tony sighs, getting out of the car. He brought his newly-repaired iron suit with him but he didn’t wear it for discreteness sake, but now he doesn’t give a fuck, so he hops right in and flies off into the North Dakotan air. 

 

“Where, Fri?”

 

“An exact signature match was found twenty miles from here.”

 

It’s a no-brainer. “Take me there, hon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know its very unclear about the voice recordings and how she made them, but ill cover them and the history in upcoming chapters.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony finds Clara alone and obviously afraid of getting shocked by the thing on her neck, and definitely gets *shocked* multiple times by her. Has she forgotten she's on the run?

How the fuck did she get out-especially with her stuff? Clara does not know but thank fucking god. 

 

It was easy, but it was hard, and quite frankly, it should’ve been expected. Obadiah wasn’t around, so that was probably why they fucked up so bad. They had let her out of the ropes to drag her somewhere else out of the boxcar, but they also had a double fuck-up and hadn’t taken the pepper spray from her rain-jacket pocket. So, yeah, there was a lot of pitiful screaming, but she got herself out of there very efficiently and very fast for the small amount of time she could probably stay away. 

 

Clara can’t hitch a flight back to Alexandria, nor will she risk hitchhiking for both security reasons. She is without her phone, but she couldn’t contact anyone she loves in fear that they can track a phone call or text. At least she has her rain jacket and her backpack, not even dirty. 

 

She did not know in the slightest how to hide. The most she could do was pay only in cash, wear gloves, keep her unique hair from general visibility, don’t act out or do anything boisterous. She had a general idea of what to do, but she feared it would just not be enough. 

 

Clara’s hungry, but, God, she doesn’t want anyone seeing her. It’s a gas station where she’s at, empty except for two cars that aren’t even parked for gas. Probably employees for the shop. 

 

The teen sighs. She had a spare pair of gloves in her backpack for whatever god-forsaken reason, applying some hand cream beforehand. She’s tied her hair back and is uncomfortable carrying her backpack on her back in case of theft of identification, so she’s carrying it on her right shoulder so that it faces forwards. She attempts looking stoic stepping inside the gas station shop, immediately going to scourge the isles for food. The redhead snatches two things of original Pringles, searches down rows until she gets the milk duds, and pops open the fridge to grab icy water and two actual Nesquik chocolate milks. 

 

Faking confidence with hopes she’ll fake it so hard it feels real, Clara heads up to the counter with her few things and starts pulling cash out of her wallet, being careful not to show the wallet just in case. 

 

The cashier is curious. “Going on a road trip or something?”

 

She nods. “Yes, ma'am. I’m heading over to Des Moine, actually. My uncle is having his wedding soon, so I’m going to Maggie’s bachelorette party,” Clara swiftly fabricates with a more Midwestern accent than not. “They’re getting married at this adorable farm, though, there’s some really cute lambs and everything,” She adds while finishing her cash count and handing over the multiple dollars, remembering she has gloves on. “I must look really weird with gloves on?”

 

“You do, but it wasn’t worth mentioning.”

 

“My hands just get cold in the car, but I don’t wanna turn the air down because then I get hot and it’s just like ‘oh, well, just use gloves,”  so that’s what I do.”

 

The cashier hums. “Have a good one, sweetie,” She says when she hands the redhead her change. 

 

“You too, ma’am!” Clara smiles as she steps out, opening up her chocolate milk bottles and stuffing her other foods except one pringle can into her backpack. It’s almost like she’s had a self-esteem boost making the whole story up, considering she’s never done it before. She knew it was pretty bad, but she was in a very bad state of living, anyway, so there are worse things. 

 

But her eyes catch a glimpse of a particular face with facial hair. 

 

She is really surprised that at that moment she did not drop her pringles and Nesquiks. 

 

Clara takes a sprint for the side of the building where no car is parked and no human is standing except her and Stark who is on her tail. Her bag drops to her forearm and she decides she needs to face him and she sweeps around, letting power glow in one hand after she drops her not-opened pringles back into her backpack’s main compartment. Clara knows the preventor is still on her neck, but she doesn’t care. “You don’t need to be within a whole mile of me.”

 

“Let’s agree to disagree,” Tony fires back. 

 

“You don’t have to have me around, you don’t need this,” Clara darkly assures him. 

 

“You don’t get to decide what I need, I do!”

 

“But it doesn’t mean I’m wrong-you don’t need me-how selfish do you think I am? You think I’d just make the life switch because I’m parentless, no, it doesn’t work like that!”

 

“That is not your-” Tony starts to yell, but he remembers he can’t risk publicity, so he lowers his tone back down. God, he just wants the kid to comply, he’s trying to save her. “That is not your choice to decide, it’s mine. I’m trying to save your ass from the worst people out there trying to hurt you-”

 

“Obadiah Stane just made the biggest mistake of his life by giving me powers that might have just made me the most dangerous person on the planet,” Clara sharply interrupts. “If anything, I could kill him if I needed to. I’m just focused on running and keeping a low profile-you may wanna stay back at the empty base the Avengers probably never paid rent for,” She snaps. Clara has clearly forgotten that the preventor is on her neck and at the moment a surge of power tries to rise up and shoot on accident, she collapses to the ground from the preventor’s shock of pain. 

 

Clara shrieks, then gasping in pain with tears threatening her eyes. Tony rushes over onto his knees, the girl in front of him is now extra vulnerable, looking down to the ground in agony and fear. “I’m fine, I’m fine!” She groans, trying to shove it under the rug, but it doesn’t work, so a couple of tears drop from her eyes. 

 

“That thing on your neck is going to keep hurting you if you don’t let me take it off properly!” Tony says. “Honey, you have to let me help you-”

 

“I can’t let you be around me or you’re going to get hurt!” Clara whisper-shouts. 

 

“Look who knows how I’ve been feeling the past eight years,” Tony murmurs. But he looks at Clara’s eyes, his daughter’s eyes. Her eyes are not his, nor is any other physical feature, but he can already tell she is _ so  _ much like him that it hurts. She is his responsibility, something he got to skip out on for the past fourteen years in one perspective, and something he missed out on in another. He needs to do the best he can for her. Whatever it takes. 

 

“Mr. Stark, I  _ cannot  _ go with you,” Clara sternly concludes. 

 

“Tony.”

 

“So? I can’t go with you, I have to figure out how to redo my whole identity so they can’t find me, I have to figure out somewhere to live, I never get to see my sister again-”

 

“First of all, you do not have to redo your identity. Second, you are most likely going to end up back home in Alexandria or at the compound. Third, of course, you are going to see your sister again-I swear on my life, Clara.”

 

When he says her name, it’s like the whole world stops. It feels more caring than she’s ever heard, but she can’t let her guard down-this isn’t right, her life is no fairytale. She has to blink to regain herself. “You  _ can’t  _ help me.”

 

“I can help you and I will help you...Just let me help you, Clara, let me help you, honey.”

 

Clara feels like collapsing into the soft, fuzzy feeling of accepting the caring, but she can’t. She swallows. “Just get this thing off my neck.” Her hand brings up her not-spilled-somehow Nesquik to her lips, taking a big gulp, despite Tony’s “you’ve gotta be kidding me” facial expression. “I’m still a kid, lemme live.”

  
  
  


 

 

“Fucking  _ FINALLY _ !” Clara yells. 

 

“Language.”

 

Clara rolls her eyes from the shotgun seat of the Chevrolet Equinox they regrettably had to steal. They made their way to an abandoned gas station and with all of Tony’s smarts and determination, he had successfully removed and disposed of the preventor with minimal pain to her neck. “God...Thank you so much,” She whispers.

 

“Your welcome. Feel better?”

 

“Yeah,” Clara nods. She slumps back in her seat, eating a salty pringle. “Wha’do we do now?”

 

Tony clicks his tongue. “I don’t know. Friday tells me that Obadiah has a chain of people everywhere, even close to the compound. I can’t risk taking you back there, I can’t take you to anyone in Shield, even, Hydra has infiltrated them, so Obadiah getting in wouldn’t be a challenging task, either. I don’t know where we go.”

 

Clara scrapes her bottom lip with her top teeth. “Why not just drive? No destination in mind? Wouldn’t having a destination be too predictable?”

 

“Yeah, but that leaves us not knowing what we’re going to do.”

 

Clara chews up a pringle and tries to talk while eating. “Why not just go somewhere random?” She asks.

 

“Like where?”

 

“Jackson Hole.”

 

Tony blinks. “Say what now?”

 

Clara sips some water. “You gotta admit that Jackson Hole is so random and the chances that we would go somewhere like that is so crazy tiny. It’s a tourist destination, yet a small destination. Yellowstone and Grand Teton have a lot of visitors, but if we stay from the parks, we could be safe,” She explains with a shrug. Clara pops another Pringle in her mouth while still looking at the billionaire. 

 

“...Okay, theoretically, it  _ sounds _ really good, but why are you so sure?”

 

“‘Cause I’ve been. It’s a faint memory, but I remember going with my mom right before the wacko put her in a coma...Wait, no, I’ve been there since then, I’m just a nostalgic ‘lil bitch.”

 

Tony rolls his eyes before his expression slightly softens. “You’re sure about this?”

 

“You have any better ideas, Stark?”

 

Tony sighs, relaxing his posture in the driver’s seat, thinking deeply. “Well...There might be a safe house there supplied by Shield. I don’t know for sure, but if it’s safe enough, it’s worth a shot.”

 

Clara nods, starting to recline her seat way back. “Let’s start driving,” She declares without her eyes leaving Tony as she gets to the point where her seat is flat. 

 

“You comfy there, dear?”

 

“No, I’m just doing it for dramatic effect,” Clara smirks, now bringing her seat back up to its normal level. 

 

Tony just stares at her in disbelief with a judgemental overtone. “You done?”

 

“Maybe. You never know with me,” Her smirk is still there as she eats another Pringle. “Want one?”

 

“No,” Tony declines as he starts up the car and then scrolls through the radio.

 

Clara rolls her eyes. She gets her phone and connects it via Apple CarPlay, pulling up her own music, relaxing when the rock tunes come on. 

 

Tony just blinks. “Who’s this?”

 

“Volbeat.”

 

Tony squints his eyes. “Who?”

 

“A Danish rock band. They played with Metallica, once. Just listen, they’re the absolute best.”

 

A song called “Still Counting” plays loudly through the car-installed Bose speakers. By fifty seconds in, Tony just hums. “Not bad.”

 

“Well, I’ll change it, if it does not please your majesty,” Clara scoffs. 

 

“No, you’re fine.”

 

“What do you like, then?”

 

“ACDC.”

 

“Not bad,” Clara shrugs.

 

Tony just gives her a mild look before he turns his eyes back to the road, making sure to apply directions to Jackson Hole before he heads off onto the quiet roads of North Dakota.

 

Clara accidentally ends up playing the whole Volbeat playlist of hers, but she obviously isn’t bothered because they’re her favorite rock band. And Tony won’t admit it out loud, but he might have a competitor for his favorite music, himself. However, he is focused on the drive and the redhead teenager beside him who so happens to be his newly-super-powered daughter who drank a whole bottle of chocolate Nesquik in five minutes and is currently munching on Pringles. 

 

Unbelievable, but also unbelievably like him as a teenager. 

 

It’s pondering in his head whether to talk to his daughter or leave it in plain silence. Perpetuate what she wants or doesn’t want, or don’t perpetuate what she does or doesn't want. Hell, he doesn’t know what she wants in the first place. But then again, saying something could make it worse, or saying nothing at all could make it worse, as well. God, he felt like his father, capable of hurting Tony in any way no matter what he does. But then, Tony looks at Clara, the daughter he never knew he had who’s already suffered quite enough from the very first tragedy and everything inside of him is so mortified of hurting her that he’s thinking this heavily like he’s done for no one else except Pepper and at one time, he did so for Nove, but she is gone now. Pepper is his heart and soul, and maybe one day, Clara would be his. Until he realized she was, he would figure out how to do this. 

 

Tony sighs, settling on something else that wasn’t his initial two options. He turns the music down a couple of notches to hear her response. “Am I supposed to make conversation with you or leave you be?”

 

“Whatever you want,” Clara replies nonchalantly, putting her phone on her lap. “Neither bothers me.”

 

“Well, are you an introvert or an extrovert?”

 

“Highly extroverted.”

 

“So don’t you tend to want to talk to people more than not talk to them?”

 

“Well, I’m kinda in the special scenario that I’m on an undercover road trip to Jackson Hole with my so-happens superhero, genius, billionaire father, newly injected by something that makes me one of the most powerful people on the planet from someone who my father is supposed to have killed eight years ago, eating Pringles and drinking Nesquik, so I honestly don’t know what I should be very outwards with what I think I want or not.”

 

“Fair point.”

 

Clara sighs. “I mean, like, realistically, I should just leave you alone and go back to Alexandria and pretend nothing happens because I am not suddenly entitled to any and all the benefits of having a biological father-and, plus, you don’t want or need me.”

 

“Who says?”

 

“No,  _ who _ assumes? I assume correctly. Simple math.”

 

“Wanting you isn’t relevant, I’m your biological father who has to take care of you. Period.”

 

“Uh, would have you fourteen years ago?”

 

“Yes, of course, I would’ve.”

 

“I know you wouldn’t have, actually, and I don’t even blame you,” Her voice is still nonchalant in comparison to her father’s. 

 

Tony doesn’t how to respond, in all honesty. She’s rejecting him, but not because she hates him, as far as he knows, it’s because she feels that it’s better for him to not have to take care of her. God, it’s almost like he wants to take her in with him at the compound more. That’s not normal, is it? Is this...new paternal instinct? If it is, it’s not right...right?

 

“I would try for you, Clara. I know you have no reason to think that, but I’d try.”

 

Clara’s eyes shift over to him, her expression not too perplexed, but her eyes are in intensity. She sighs, thinking she could easily regret letting her guard down. A girl could try, right? “Fine, let’s talk...I don’t know what about-”

 

“Favorite color?”

 

“That’s such a stupid question,” Clara starts with an intensely judgemental tone. “All of them,” She finishes casually. 

 

“Favorite animal?”

 

“Anything that’s furry and a mammal-I loathe bugs.”

 

“The one place you’ve always wanted to go, but have never been?”

 

“I have dozens, but Iceland is the first since it surprisingly has the cheapest airfare and definitely the safest for solo travelers.”

 

“Your…”

 

Clara raises her brows and crunches another Pringle in her mouth.

 

“I’m guessing your favorite food is Pringles?” Tony takes a shot at it. 

 

“False, it’s french fries,” Clara corrects. “You feed me good enough french fries and you get a friend for life.”

 

Tony chuckles. “I can relate to that, but with a cheeseburger.”

 

Clara hums. 

 

“What’s your...favorite movie?”

 

“I’ve been watching Star Trek: Beyond on repeat.”

 

“Favorite song?”

 

“Same answer as the first question.”

 

“All the songs?”

 

“A lot of songs,” Clara replies before sipping water down her throat. “Tell me about you.”

 

Tony furrows his brows. “Doesn’t the public know everything about me already?”

 

“I don’t know your birthday, so I don’t know your zodiac.”

 

Tony has to think about it for a whole, long moment. “Gemini?” He responds slowly with deep hesitance. 

 

“Well, when’s your birthday?”

 

“May twenty-ninth, nineteen sev-”

 

“You’re correct, you’re a Gemini.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“I’m a Sagittarius...Oh, I know! What did you score on the Buzzfeed quiz for naming all the countries in the world?”

 

Tony has the most gobsmacked expression on his face. “What the hell makes you think I’ve taken a _Buzzfeed_ quiz for naming all the countries?”

 

Clara shrugs. “Aren’t you supposed to know everything?”

 

“I don’t know what I had for dinner yesterday, you take me too seriously.”

 

Clara rolls her eyes. “Whatever. Well, I, on the other hand, got all except one of them?”

 

Tony slowly turns his head. “Which country was that?”

 

Clara squints her eyes in attempts to remember which country it was. “Djibouti,” She finally recalls. 

 

“Oh, well, yeah, that’s kinda a hard one-”

 

“I could name countries including Kiribati, Cabo Verde, Palau, Micronesia, and Togo. I could name those but not Djibouti which is literally right by Egypt which I could name?”

 

“It’s all the countries in the world-you’ll never even visit all the countries in the world.”

 

“Try me,” Clara smirks. 

 

“That wouldn’t be really safe.”

 

“That’s true, I don’t really wanna go face-to-face with Kim Jong Un, but I could now technically kill him with a blast from my hand. The world governments should really hire me to kill their targets. I could be like a contractor. I have my own rates and either they pay them or they don’t. It’s pretty smart,” She fathoms. “I mean, like, I could be an Avenger, but I’m too young for that and I wouldn’t work well with people who defy foreign governments trying to set laws and agreements in place to protect citizens of their countries. I know that they’re trying to get stuff done, but they don’t even give the governments a heads-up or collaborate with them. Like, I love privatized industry and entities, but the Avengers are an incredibly powerful and volatile thing that needs to be handled with knowledge, care, and oversight from people who know what they’re doing because obviously the Avengers don’t in some situations,” Clara lets loose all at once. 

 

Tony blinks and takes no extra time to respond to her. “The fact that a fourteen-year-old girl understands more than Steve Rogers about what the Avenger’s relationship with government should be really says a lot.”

 

“Doesn’t it?” Clara laughs, but she then remembers something. “Wait, there’s something in my backpack I always have with me just in case. I’m overly prepared, but it oddly worked out in this scenario.” The redhead pulls out a black sweatshirt and lazily yanks off her coral rain jacket, showing her peony heathered t-shirt just to get covered by the zip-up. She turns her head to put her mouth on something, a neck pillow blowing up. Clara pulls out something else out of another pocket, blows it up, and puts it on the car floor as a footrest. She snatches her second Nesquik and puts it in her right breast pocket where it fits perfectly. Out of another interior pocket is a big blanket she draped over her body. Finally, she pulls out and down an eye mask and then her hoodie just before she reclines her seat back, starting to finish off her Pringles. “It’s called BauBax. Look it up.”

 

Tony’s expression is a replica of the one he remembers making when he discovered The Mandarin was a hoax, turning out to be some wacko who had no idea what the fuck was going on. 

 

Did Clara forget she was on the run from someone who was supposed to be dead?

 

Tony sighs. It’s not worth commenting on. He knew he would’ve pulled shit like that as a teenager, himself. In fact, he did all the time. At the same time, though, she talked like she knew what was going on before he dragged her on the road with him. Tony didn’t regret it, or anything, but he just keeps getting more and more amused by the redhead who so happens to be his daughter. 

 

“Six hours or so to Jackson Hole it is,” He murmurs to himself, silence ensues that isn’t the sound of more rock music banging through the speakers. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, the BauBax is a real jacket. It is expensive but very funny! XD Hope you liked this chapter, sorry it was extra long, and I'll have the next one soon!


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony and Clara head undercover to Jackson Hole...juuuuuuusssssttttt to get told by Nick Fury via discreet message to yeet themselves to a safe house in Japan. The start of a Earth-bouncing journey begins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It took a little bit of extra time to get this one out because i had no writer's motivation, but i got it back! Next chapter will likely be quicker, who knows! Again, kudos and comments are incredibly appreciated! Thank you to all who have already kudosed and commented, it's such an incredible blessing! EEEEEEE THANK YOU! I hope you like next chap!

Driving in autopilot as Clara read a thick-sized book without heavy thoughts should have been easy...Except it wasn’t.

 

Tony looks at his newly-found daughter and all he knows is that he can’t be what his father was. But how the hell does he do that? She’s fourteen, has no mom, spent her life in foster care, does not dare to get close to anyone because she fears hurting the people around her no matter if she knows them or if they are complete strangers to her.

 

That is what he has felt for a long while, despite not being a super-powered being, but a man in a can who can kill and has a name with a past, and that is close enough to know that one of the first things he is going to do for her is to help Clara know she doesn’t have to live in fear.

 

His father would have not done that for him if he was in her position.

 

He sees beautiful and genius-ly intelligent Nove Starford in her. Her hair, eyes, and skin are his once-long-ago love-of-his-life’s in all ways. He’s picking up on the personality, too. It’s her, of course, but it’s terrifying that he sees him, as well. She has this sense of cocky, smug bastard, or bastard-ess, but that’s not even a word. Clara is what he was as a teenager, except, she appears to care about some things more, but her snarky words and all-knowing smirk contradicts that. To contrast that, however, is the shaking-and-afraid girl he sees collapse to the ground in pain because of what Obadiah did to her. The man he once called “Obie”.

 

Him, Pepper, and the daughter he never knew about, but he now knew about her and she was hurt, too.

 

Obadiah Stane was going to motherfucking die.

 

That rage had been building up for a pretty long time over the past five-and-a-half hour, almost to Jackson Hole. Thoughts in all negativity and in the down-right worst never ceased for Tony Stark, that was a given considering the three months of being held hostage in an Afghan cave, flying into a wormhole through space to save nine million plus people, also being nearly killed by a supposed former “buddy” by his big, old, self-righteousness shield in a Siberian Hydra bunker in its merciless cold temperatures.

 

So...is there a great reason to not have the slightest bit of bad thought?

 

No.

 

Beside him, though, there’s hope for this girl, there’s gotta be. She is so young, so strong, and she is undoubtedly someone who has absorbed her amazing mother’s vibrance and passion if he assumes correctly. Maybe it’s just a vibe, but what exactly does he know? Hell, she escaped someone who has probably grown stronger since he was supposed to have been killed and dead.

 

Also, how the fuck does someone get electrocuted, exploded, and not die?

 

Tony feels he knows nothing. This world has risen beyond him long ago.

 

He has to shake these thoughts before he crashes the car that’s not even theirs. “What book you reading?”

 

“The Diabolic. About a girl-machine thing who is raised to kill anyone to protect a senator’s daughter, but then she has to go pretend to be her. It’s complicated.”

 

Tony just hums. Unlike when almost everyone says something to him that isn’t Pepper or Rhodey, he actually hears and has listened to what she said. “Is it good?”

 

“Very,” Clara nods. “I’m almost done.”

 

Tony’s eyes immediately squint. “Weren’t you just halfway?”

 

“Yes, I was, but I am now close to completing this book,” Clara reiterates. “I’m a naturally quick reader. I just comprehend stuff at a faster speed than people can believe. Sounds pretty bad, but-”

 

“No, kiddo, I’m like that too. One time, I learned thermonuclear astrophysics overnight,” Tony remembers how Maria Hill asked and he simply replied, “last night.”

 

“Now, that, I can’t do at all. Period. Nit, not, nada.”

 

“You sure?”

 

“You, see, your thing, Stark, is roasting people to burnt crisp lizards in the Saharan Desert with your intellectual science, my method is the simple logic of words.”

 

“Have an example?” He smirks. His eyes flash to the road for a moment, but nothing is there. This road is very flat and monotonous on the way to the minuscule place.

 

“No, I’m too tired at the moment...And too lazy. I also have nothing to prove to my old man.”

 

“I actually agree.”

 

Clara squints her eyes. “And why is that?”

 

“You’re your mom.”

 

The redhead’s expression softens, eyes now at her father. “How long did you know her?”

 

Memories are floating around his head. First kiss, first time, Nove introduces him to her parents, but something new flashes into his head that he must have forgotten. It’s a field, definitely not in college-era Massachusetts or anywhere northeast. Maybe it’s out in the plains...No, he was wrong. It was actually out west in Arizona. One of the national parks, but it was actually cool, outside, as odd as it was. She’s talking about the stars, constellations, and stuff, despite not being in any sort of scientific major.

 

_“You’re a lot more fascinating and beautiful than these stars.”_

 

That was the clearest thing Tony could remember, of all things, along with her smile and laugh that came after.

 

All of these events were on a very long, thick string. “Um, all the way through college and a really long time after. She...dropped off the face of the earth in our early thirties. Now I know why.”

 

Clara slumped a little more in her seat, eyes turned to the window.

 

His expression is weighted with remorse. “No, I don’t mean it like that, kiddo...There are worse things, she could have been sick, she could have died-”

 

“She did die, she’s in a coma and I may never see her again,” Clara cuts off harshly. “...Or she could come back, but how long would that take? I’m not going to wait on someone, I’m going to get my life together myself.”

 

“How many times do I have to tell you you’re not alone?”

 

The redhead swallows. “I don’t know if I should rely on someone who gets nearly killed for a living.”

 

“It’s not a job, kiddo...It’s an obligation.”

 

“You, nor do even the Avengers, owe the world a thing, really, but we are thankful for everything you’ve done for this Earth-or at least I am...Steve Rogers does owe you an apology and endless favors, though.”

 

Tony scoffs. “I don’t need anything from him except to stay out of my life, he’s done enough,” He mutters. If he could just get back to Pepper, try his best to take care of Clara, and figure stuff out? Maybe the stitches could be stitched. Possibly, this man in an American-themed suit isn’t as wrecking as he’s let him think.

 

“Looks like we have something in common, Captain Righteousness, and all.”

 

“That man has nothing on you. And you haven’t hurt me, Clara,” Tony corrects.

 

“Then how many times do I correct you that people don’t want kids they don’t know about?”

 

“For as long as you want,” He nonchalantly responds.

 

“You suggesting I’m a good thing, being in your life?”

 

“I...I don’t know.”

 

Clara only replies with silence for the last segment of the trip.

 

The people of Jackson Hole, visitor or resident, were scattered enough in small enough clumps that they weren’t really seen. Clara wasn’t really recognizable, considering she was just some redhead teenager who no one knew of. Tony, however, had to cover up with a baseball cap and some sunglasses from a Kmart. Walmart? Target? Not here.

 

It was a quick in-and-out trip, Clara snatching more pringles and water on the way. The both of them kept their heads mostly down, but not in too much of a suspicious manner. Again, she eats more Pringles, getting another eye-squint from Tony when they get in the car. “Don’t you need, like, a meal?”

 

“That’s not your problem.”

 

“Yes it is-do you even have any more cash?”

 

“I do back home in my wallet, but I only had twenty bucks. I’ll starve.”

 

“Uh, no,” Tony corrects, “You’re gonna get something to eat sooner or later.”

 

“Whatever. Your loss of cash,” Clara sighs. Technically, she can’t stop him, but she can think of worse things than starvation, like death. However, she is not dead yet, and starvation causes death. Dammit, Clara hated dependence. Maybe spending on Pringles and Nesquik was not the wisest choice, after all. She didn’t even think of it being as a wise choice, in the first place, she wasn’t thinking about wise choices.

 

Tony hears a noise and blinks. It’s his phone that he sloppily fishes from a pocket. When he finally takes a look on the screen, he’s gaping. “You’re kidding me.”

 

Clara’s dark brows furrow. “What?”

 

“He wants us to go to fucking Japan.”

 

On top of scrunched brows, she has scrunched eyes, now, too. “Who?”

 

Tony sighs with pain. “Nick Fury.”

 

“...The Director of Shield?”

 

“You know him?”

 

“From the minimal public information on him. What took him so long to say anything to you?” She asks. Her arms are now crossed for comfort, not anger. Her arms never cross from anger, most of the time. Sometimes, they may cross for frustration, at least.

 

“I dunno. Also, he turns out to be your mom’s god dad.”

 

The scrunchy face falls fast. “No.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Mr. Eye Patch with the black emo trench coat?” Clara reiterates.

 

“That’s the one.”’

 

“Good god.”

 

“I know.”

 

The redhead blinks when she remembers something, though. “Wait, why the hell are we going to Japan? Where in Japan?”

 

“Uh, he gave me some Japanese address. Somewhere called Hokkaido?”

 

Her expression brightens to the magnitude of a thousand light bulbs. “Oh, the northern island! Lemme see!” Clara snatches the phone from him.

 

“How do you know where that is, I don’t even remember my social security number.”

 

“I’m cool and you’re not.”

 

“Uh-”

 

“Okay, it’s in the center of the island. Very isolated place. We fly into its biggest city, Sapporo, rent a car, and get ourselves to wherever he wants us to go,” Clara sums up, but there’s the major realization. “Wait, from what airport does he want us to fly from?”

 

“Uh, well, there’s somehow an airport here.”

 

“The...there’s a small airport, here, it’s not international, though.” Tony’s face is perplexed as he turns his eyes back to his daughter.

 

“Then he must want us to fly from here to a big airport to the next then off to Sapporo-there’s no way to know for sure, airlines can do anything,” Clara speculates. “Like, what else does he want us to do?”

 

“...A warehouse.”

 

Clara’s eyes zoom closer to the text of his message. “He thinks there might be an antidote to my powers in the middle of Japan?”

 

Tony nods.

 

Clara has no logical questions to ask. “Well, let’s get going.”

 

And that is how they have brought themselves to the local airport in Jackson Hole, of all places, expensive tickets and every fake I.D sent to them by Nick and worked perfectly under the identity of Greg Rymann and his dear niece, Sophie Rymann, completely fake with an untraceable alias for the two of them, especially with the southern-borderline-midwestern accent “Sophie” speaks if she needs to talk to anyone. Tony caught on pretty quickly and got away with speaking a normal tone since he spoke kinda quietly.

 

Not that it’s a big deal, but Tony has never ever flown outside of a private plane before, but it was in business class, but it didn’t really matter. However, the seats could lie flat, there was Wi-Fi and on-demand movies. Clara, on the other hand, has never flown on a plane at all. She was pretty sure they would be fine, the statistics are trustworthy enough. So she clenches her handy BauBax jacket in her right fist, sitting in the outer seat of a double cluster, and the plane goes up and up into the air. To her comfort, everything’s okay as the pilot makes his normal announcements and there’s no crying children, old people, or anyone snoring. What a blessing.

 

Tony notices the appearance of discomfort like he would know if his intricate facial hair was shaved off his face in his sleep. “You okay?” He asks when the plane is stable in the sky.

 

Clara swiftly turns her head with her hoodie now over her head, the set-up she had on the road trip was duplicated for the plane ride all the way to Sapporo. “Yes, of course, I am...Never flown on a plane before, so I was nervous about the way up.”

 

“Never experienced any issues on any kind of plane, Clara, we are completely okay,” He reassures, not in a judging manner, but in a casually trying-to-comfort fashion.

 

The redhead simply nods. Now that her fear of the plane ride has dissipated, she has this growing grin on her face.

 

“What’s the grin, though?” Tony inquires curiously.

 

“I’m actually going to Japan...I’m going to Japan,” Clara whisper squeals.

 

Tony laughs. “Kiddo, we’re not even going to Tokyo, what’s interesting about the middle of nowhere in Japan?”

 

“The food, the scenery, the most beautiful flower fields, and weather. It’s literally spring, the cherry blossoms bloom, it’s incredibly sunny skies, it’ll be perfect! There’s Hiyatsujima, Unkai Terrace, Shakotan Peninsula, did I mention unique food to try?”

 

“Hiya what?” Tony’s eyes squint.

 

“I have a list on my phone on Evernote,” Clara starts pulling up her collection of places to go see, eat, and stay there. There are so many places Tony has to remember and catch up with, but he knows he’s not wasting a single second on trying with such a glowing, jubilant expression on her face through every single word.

 

Soon enough, time fleets away with her playing games on her phone, watching pre-downloaded tv shows, and going through the book she read in the car plus another within the next few hours. Him, however, needs to rest the best he can with the neck pillow, eye mask, and compression socks he bought at a small shop in the airport. All he can think of is Pepper whom he’s had no contact with since he left for Montana and she must be crazy insane over worrying about him out of her mind. And again, does he feel he’s hurt her like she has never deserved since day one when he told her to press a button that would take his life, but somehow didn’t.

 

It’s around seventeen hours to the Japanese airport including an overnight layover in Taipei, Taiwan, which Clara is trying to figure out where they will stay for that one night and what in the world they will do before their flight over to Sapporo where they at least have a guaranteed safe house to stay at. A hotel is risky, but they have no choice. They would most likely be less safe sleeping somewhere in public than a hotel.

 

By the near end of the disastrously long flight, Tony is awake in the dark, but Clara is asleep beside him. She’s unintentionally leaning on his side, but he doesn’t want to wake the teen who has had a really bad time in the past...How many hours has it been since she was kidnapped?

 

The light of the oncoming city of Taipei glows on Clara’s sleeping face (which is kinda ugly, at the very moment, but she’s sleeping and he doesn’t care), but the girl doesn’t wake and Tony doesn’t dare do so for her. However, the pilot’s announcement of arrival does, and she groggily is now awake, not even caring to lean off of his body because she’s vulnerable due to her state. “Please tell me we’re here.”

 

“Yeah, we’re here, Clara,” Tony murmurs in response.

 

“Holy shit...I’m out of the country for the first time in Taiwan...I’m in Taiwan,” Clara whispers. She doesn’t add that she has now met her biological father and is on the run from a dead man who gave her powers.

 

“That you are, honey, that you are.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony and Clara deal with a layover in Taipei, having to find somewhere to stay for the night. Plus, they're hungry as hell in the morning and they need new clothes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a note: this chapter is much longer than usual so im sorry if you dont have toleration for that! I hope you give kudos, comments, and that you like the chapter! Enjoy!

Clara Rose Starford has combusted, and Tony wasn’t sure if that was a huge danger to them, but he was biased towards not thinking so. Like, looking at the girl’s pure, bouncing-off-the-wall energy, he didn’t really want to shut down her party. 

 

The airport was bustling with energy of the Asian airport, a place where so many Asian businessmen would get on and off planes. And hey, she knows Mandarin Chinese, so she can get around and look like a smart white person. There was probably a lot of people who just wanted to sigh in a mixture of irritation and sadness when foreigners didn’t speak the language anywhere near well. 

 

When Clara is finally done having her bright-face-freak-out in the terminal, she is going to back to business by sweeping around to Tony, whose face is the epitome of “oh my god, you are so adorable.” He didn’t look impatient in the slightest. 

 

“What’s the face?” The redhead blinks. 

 

“Nothing. You know where we shall stay for a night, miss ‘I-know-where-the-hell-we’re-going’?”

 

“Yes!” Clara points a finger up. “It’s cheap so we can save for food!”

 

Tony hated that he didn’t have unlimited money, like usual, so that she wouldn’t have to worry about stuff like that like she probably does always, but it’s not the case. He just nods. “Well, where is it?”

 

And that is the prelude to ending up at a capsule hotel in the middle of Taipei. 

 

The billionaire has no idea what to think of this. You sleep in a capsule? Clara explained it all to him, but it made him pretty cautious. They would be sharing a dorm with other people and such, he was sure. The whole concept of it he just found...very, very odd, but scary because maybe it would make it easier for someone to get Clara. 

 

The duo enter the hotel’s lobby, sunglasses on Tony’s eyes, despite it being night. Clara, however, has her face open to the world and she attempts confidence in her Mandarin. “Wǒ jīn wǎn kěyǐ shēnqǐng liǎng lì jiāonáng, háishì xūyào tíqián yùyuē?”  _ May I request two capsules for just tonight or do I need to book ahead of time? _

 

The face of the receptionist is generally sweet, even for this late hour. “Nǐ kěnéng huì shuō yīngyǔ.”  _ You may speak English _

 

“A, bù xūyào nàgè, wǒ zài liànxí. Wǒmen kěyǐ mǎi liǎng lì jiāonáng ma?” _ Ah, no need for that, I am practicing. May we get two capsules, though?  _  Clara speaks in rapid-fire Mandarin (to Tony’s ears).

 

“Shì de, dāngrán kěyǐ. Wǒmen zài hùnhé xìngbié sùshè yǒu liǎng gè jiāonáng. Nàyàng hǎo ma?”

 

_ Yes, of course you may. We have two capsules available in a four-capsule mixed-gender dormitory. Would that be alright? _

 

“Um…” Clara’s face is unsure, but finally replies, “ Shì de, nà huì hěn bàng, xièxiè.” _ Yes, that would be great, thank you. _

 

As the two are given room cards and they must find their way to their dorm,  Tony breaks the silence. “You almost fluent?”

 

Clara’s brows furrow as she inserts her room card. “Yes, how did you know?”

 

“Um...I just did,” Tony sheepishly says, not wanting to break it to her how he’s listened to her tapes. It didn’t seem like something to mention, at the time. 

 

Inside, it was actually empty. There were four capsules, two on each side stacked upon each other with a small window to the city on the wall they stood to see in front of them. Clara was quick to call the top bunk of the left side, purely fascinated with it. Tony, however, is slower and is observing as he gets inside. He fears its minuscule size, but it turns out to be completely fine. “You okay up there, kiddo?”

 

“Perfect, Stark!” Clara responds. “I’m gonna go to sleep. Night,” She immediately lies down and is quick to start dozing off once her face is somewhat cleansed by facial cleansing wipes and is hydrated by a good night cream. Clara does not even tie her hair back, she is out within a couple of minutes. 

 

Tony is not so quick to acceptance, though, so he turns on the little tv in his capsule and lies awake on his back, his eyes facing the ceiling in the dark of the capsule and the dorm. Around him, there is peace, but he is a war of “how do I protect her” on the inside of his mind until he himself finds the will to sleep, images of the love of his life still ringing present when he drifts. 

 

Then, he rose to his wake, but it is still dark...right?

 

Tony notices a pair of legs standing by the window where he notices it’s getting slightly lighter. Maybe it’s the sunrise, she’s watching? He doesn’t know until he gets out of the capsule, stretches, pops some bones, and out the window is a golden sunrise. “Is it just me, or does that seem odd for a city like this?” He asks, dry-mouthed from his sleep, kinda groggy, but awake enough for this moment.    
  


“It is,” Clara agrees. “We need to go buy clothes, but I’m unsure of where they’ll sell clothes for a size twelve American woman and a whatever-size-you-are American man. The sizing is different here in Taiwan, and they tend to be shorter and thinner.”

 

Tony shrugs. “Ask the receptionist from last night, she seemed nice.”

 

“Maybe. Like, I Googled when we got to the airport for places, and the only thing I heard about was possibly in the malls, TianMu, and around Shi Men Din. Maybe at Taipei 101.”

 

“Where’s that?”

 

“You know the big-ole-building here?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Well, it was once the world’s tallest. It has a shopping mall.”

 

“Oh,” He says cluelessly. Not like he’s ever invested time into figuring out where he could find clothes in a foreign country. “We also might wanna get something to eat.”

 

“We’ll have no problem with that if you don’t have a problem with Taiwanese food,” Clara shrugs. “I’ll also have to buy some clothes. Jeans and a shirt would be a miracle. But yes, we can check with the receptionist if she’s so kind.”

 

Tony turns around. “What time is it?”

 

Clara swipes out her phone and looks at the Taiwanese time. “Like, seven in the morning. Things are starting to wake up in Taipei, most likely. We have five hours. Maybe we’ll catch a Taiwanese breakfast,” She ends her sentence with a smirk. “But before that,  I’m going to go shower.”

 

Tony instantly panics. “They don’t have mixed shower rooms, too, do they?”

 

Clara sweeps around with a grossed out face. “No! I wouldn’t shower here if I knew there were bad gender separation standards!” Her face softens to a normal expression after that. “They provide towels and slippers. Basically, the men's showers are on floors nine and ten and the women's showers are on floor eight with the reception...You still look scared.”

 

“Well, men are perverts, and I’m trying to protect you from getting kidnapped again, so of course I’m still scared for your safety.”

 

Her eyes show how touched she feels, as does the simplification of her fur-soft expression. “That’s...that’s really sweet, Stark, but I should be okay. I know how to defend myself.”

 

“Or just to hurt yourself. You went up to the man when you could have stayed away.”

 

Her tone isn’t changing in sense of protecting her pride or ego, whatever she could but wouldn’t in such magnitude. “I was keeping my sister safe because she doesn’t deserve this. I gave her a pocket knife, even when it was my last defense that wasn’t a weak fist to the gut. I’m going to be okay. I’m here, aren’t I?”

 

“I’ve gotta protect you before you aren’t.”

 

Clara sighs, trying to cover up how loose and warmed she feels by someone actually caring about her like that. No one’s ever wanted to protect her, stand up for her, and that she was really holding close in this very moment. However, she shoves it away and heads out of the dorm to go shower while Tony goes separate ways to go to the male showers. 

 

The women's showers are empty except for her, so that is a comfort, but she makes sure to look around for cameras and suspicious things because she is now highly paranoid due to Tony’s reminder. She really can’t get over how attentive and...protective, dare she say it, he was being. 

 

Clara strips of her clothes inside a stall all to herself, hoping hanging her clothes over the top of the door would signal that someone was inside and that if anyone came inside she would mentally stab them to death. Hopefully, it wasn’t a culturally bad thing. She didn’t know much about Taiwanese or Chinese culture, but she probably hasn’t offended anyone, yet, right?

 

There’s shower gel provided, as well as shampoo and conditioner, but Clara is too lazy to do her hair, nor is it good to do it too often for the general thickness of the auburn locks, so she skips out on it and cleanses her body well. Because all she does is wash her body then stand in the warm water for a good five minutes straight doing absolutely nothing, the overall length of her bathing is short at only ten minutes. By the time she dries off and slathers on french lavender honey body cream from Bath and Body Works, there are only two more women who have entered the dorm and are now showering themselves. The redhead nervously exits, now clothed and going to scoop out the perfect amount of face cream and to apply waterproof mascara, roll on that rose deodorant, along with some SPF-twenty foundation for her fair skin tone and its redness she’s been working to eliminate. She’s relaxing, though, considering no women are outside their showers. Clara doesn’t prefer to be seen at the moment. When finished, it’s like a sigh of relief on the inside. She walks out and away back to the dorm, hoping Tony Stark doesn’t take hour-and-a-half showers like some people do. 

 

When she scans the card and opens the door, he isn’t there, but all of their things are as they’re supposed to be. Clara makes the most of it, gathering her things, spraying relatively strong perfume that matches her body cream from a mini-sized bottle she always kept with her, applying a good layer of tinted-red lip balm she should have applied before. She slides her shoes back on to replace the slippers when Tony comes back inside, fully dressed and looking refreshed. “You okay?”

 

“Yeah, of course, I am.” Clara isn’t sure what to make of Tony’s care, as much as she’d love to accept every particle of it. “I’m ready when you are. We have four hours until we have to go to the airport, and a couple more until our flight.”

 

The duo makes their way downstairs to the reception, ready to get some new clothes before going to a whole other country just north of them and then do God knows what. Clara gently smiles at the new receptionist. “Wǒmen zhèngzài tuì fáng, dàn nǐ zhīdào nǎge hǎo dìfāng kěyǐ wéi gèng dà de nǚhái mǎi měiguó fúzhuāng ma? Zhìshǎo měiguó nánrén de yīfú?”  _ We are checking out, but do you know any good places to buy American clothes for girls who are on the larger side? At least American men’s clothes? _

 

The straight bob-cut woman had the snobbiest expression come to her face, worse than Tony has seen at some hotels, and he’s been to incredibly expensive hotels. She even talks to her in plain English, straight to her face, not even bothered by the man on her right side. “ You could eat less trash food Americans make themselves look like fat pigs over and take a hike.”

 

“Excuse me?” Tony blurts, his voice is incredibly defensive and blazing, probably catching everyone else’s attention in the room. 

 

Clara has to use her right hand to snatch Tony’s forearm to tell him to back down as she uses her other elbow to lean on the counter top and cock her head just slightly. “Tā huì gěi nǐ dài lái jùdà de wénhuà zhènhàn, dàn wǒ hé qítā shēntǐ de zhòngliàng bìng bù děngtóng yú tāmen dànǎo de nénglì. Jíshǐ tā shì, wǒ yǒu yīgè fēicháng zhídé zhùyì de dànǎo. Lìng yī fāngmiàn nǐ ne? Bù wánquán de. Zhù nǐ yǒu měihǎo de yītiān.” _ It's gonna come as a huge culture shock to you, but the weight of my and other's bodies aren't the equivalent of our brain's capability. Even if it was, I have a pretty notable brain. You on the other hand? Not quite. Have a good day.  _ Clara slaps the cards on the countertop and swiftly makes for the elevator. 

 

When inside, Tony is quick to speak. “I could’ve killed her right then and there.”

 

“Save it, Stark, I have a lot more to worry about than someone telling me about my weight, and I don’t even care, I think I look great, most of the time.”

 

“There’s not even a most of the time, kiddo. Don’t think bad stuff like that.”

 

Clara’s brows are scrunched together when she turns to look at him. “Thanks?”

 

“What’s the questioning tone?” Tony inquires cluelessly. 

 

“You’re acting like a supportive dad and while it may look good on you, it’s really weird since it’s been three-or-so days since I’ve met you.”

 

“Can I do anything for you without you thinking it’s weird?”

 

“No, no you cannot,” Clara retorts, leaning back against the wall of the elevator as it drops to the ground level. Once it is opened up, the duo step out and exit the building, revealed to a semi-busy street in Taipei, of all places on this Earth. 

 

“Well, then, let’s go get some Taiwanese breakfast and clothes-I am dying to get into fresh clothes,” Clara declares. 

  
  
  


 

The city of Taipei is a unique place that Clara has never experienced before, and Tony can see the wonder on her face. 

 

Granted, they’re still in the car on the way to the most random Taiwanese pancake place they found across the river after they realized they had to exchange their money plus go to an ATM to safely withdraw money from an emergency account Tony had that Nick approved for withdrawal, but they had so much time to spare that Tony didn’t care as long as it wasn’t an hour-long ride. 

 

Exiting the car, it still isn’t too terribly busy, but it’s crowded, at the same time. Their cover is still pretty strong, even as they’re in line for Taiwanese egg and cheese pancakes. Clara is looking every which way, so fascinated by the place that’s somewhat sunny with clouds now out. It is definitely not Dallas, Fresno, Billings, or Alexandria. No. This is a whole other country that has nothing to do with American style. As much as she loves her country, she’s really enthusiastic about other ones. 

 

Clara finally orders for the two of them with no hassle, the egg and cheese pancake wraps look delicious, and they discover the taste matches its looks. It definitely didn’t take long to munch down the food. Now stuffed, Clara is desperate to find new clothes and to make most of her on-the-run layover in Taiwan, of all places. She was safe, she was sure of it. Taiwan was a generally safe country, and she was too joyed by traveling abroad to care about her safety anymore. Hell, she had forgotten about what Obadiah gave her. 

 

“Those were so good,” Tony says, throwing away the tissue paper that came with the pancake wrap. 

 

“It was, but now we need new clothes, so I figured out we need to go to the Breeze Center mall that has tons of international stores that should have American size clothes,” Clara explains. “Again, we are going to need a taxi.”

 

“We just got out of the taxi.”

 

“Well, we need another taxi.” Easily enough, that wasn’t a hard task to do, and the trip to the district was another twenty minutes, so nearly an hour is gone from the day, already. They passed a lot of the city, though, to a district on the edge. Clara was mere feet away from Taipei 101 from the car for just seconds, a feeling of exhilaration enters her, all while Tony watches thinking that this is the happiest she’s probably ever been in her life. 

 

They are dropped off practically in the smack-down middle of the area,, lonely and foreign surrounded by stores and street food. There’s some Chinese-Taiwanese pop playing from somewhere, the smell of local food fills her nose, but she’s pretty full. Instead of more wholesome food, her eyes catch sight of the mall within seconds. Clara drags Tony by the wrist until they’re a few feet away from the entrance. They enter and it’s like a melting pot of American and Taiwanese, both English and Chinese words scattered everywhere. 

 

“God, I love malls,” Clara whispers. It’s mostly American in appearance and she can already catch sight of Tory Burch, a place she could only dream of affording (she would eventually get the three hundred dollars saved for the classic sandals if she worked hard enough. However, she quickly walks over to the directory and sees Uniqlo, a notoriously cheap store that should work for the time being. “We gotta go to the fourth floor for Uniqlo.”

 

“U-what?” Tony’s eyes squint. 

 

“Oh, it’s a kinda cheap brand, but it’s good unless you see something better on the way. Let’s go,” Clara quickly says as she hops on an elevator. 

 

“Ah-wait-Clara!” Tony has to catch up with her before the doors close. Oddly enough, there are only two people on the elevator, appearing to be a short Taiwanese couple. Clara just gives a mild, sweet smile in greeting before turning her face back to the elevator doors. 

 

When the duo gets out with the other two behind them, going their own way, Clara observes that there are no stores: Uniqlo takes up the whole floor. 

 

“Oh...my god,” Clara blinks with a quiet voice. “It’s like Nordstrom in San Francisco-God, I love Nordstrom.”

 

Immediately, Clara starts her way to the whole top section where Tony hesitantly split to the men’s section, pretty sure that nothing bad would happen by looking at clothes in a clothing store. In the girl’s section, Clara has begun looking for t-shirts, immediately grabbing soft ones in different colors as long as they’re an extra large. 

 

Meanwhile, Tony doesn’t see too much of interest, but he’ll probably end up getting plain-jane t-shirts and the trousers. The gingham button-up shirts aren’t really his style. As for pants, any jeans should do. He turns around and Clara is standing there with one t-shirt and a pair of jeans. “Done.”

 

“You do realize we have no idea how long we’ll be doing this, right? Get some more clothes than that, kiddo, and you can get whatever you like.”

 

“No, I really shouldn’t-”

 

“Honey, please, anything we spend here won’t phase me and won’t endanger us. Please get what you want,” He quietly, yet kindly urges. 

 

Clara nods. “Okay,” She replies quietly, going off and finding the clothes she liked better, which didn’t take long. Within another ten minutes, she goes back to Tony with a collection holding a delicately light yellow sleeveless button-up blouse at the front of her collection... She holds it up over her torso. “Whadd’you think? Fit? Not fit? Wait, why am I asking a man who has no knowledge of woman’s size-”

 

“It’ll fit,” Tony casually responds. “And I have a girlfriend, so I know a little bit about women’s sizes.”

 

“Oh, Miss Potts? She’s awesome, I would totally study business and try to make it to the top like her, one day. I think that’s it, though, four pants and bottoms should suffice,” Clara decides. 

 

“Don’t you need pajamas, maybe a jacket?”

 

Clara has a horrific realization. “I need a bra,” She murmurs. 

 

Tony’s eyes go to the side. “Um...I saw a bit of that,” He responds lightly and quietly. “They have everything else, though,” He adds at a notch higher. “We’ll go somewhere else if we need to.”

 

Clara sighs. “I’ll go find pajamas,” She scurries off, Tony making sure to keep at the very minimum a vague eye on her. It’s not like he doesn’t trust her, she proves capable of independence, but he’s gained a strong sense of paranoia. If Obadiah Stane was out there, that terrified him more than anything. 

 

Eventually, the redhead teen has gained a bag and is now with a five outfit collection, two pajama pairs, three bras, and eight pairs of (incredibly to Clara) underwear. She knows she needed a lot more than she’d admit, but she didn’t want to seem to take advantage of his money. Then, again, he reminded her of how long they could be on the run: it was unknown, meaning long or short, so she wouldn’t take a risk of not having enough clothes for the run. 

 

They both settle on a collection of clothing to last them for a while, swiftly checking out and exiting the mall. By this time, they’ve spent just about four hours eating, getting to places, and buying some new clothes. You’d think they were just on vacation, but they were supposedly not. They were on the run, but where the hell were their chasers?

 

Clara exits her change-room stall, sweeping her eyes around to find Tony. 

 

“Over here.”

 

Clara swipes her body back the other way. She throws her arms out. “How do I look?” She smirks, now adorned in the[ sleeveless light yellow linen button-up ](https://www.uniqlo.com/us/en/women-premium-linen-sleeveless-shirt-414176.html?dwvar_414176_color=COL11)and [light-colored stripe bow-belted linen pants.](https://www.uniqlo.com/us/en/women-belted-linen-cotton-wide-straight-pants-extended-length-online-exclusive-416179.html?dwvar_416179_color=COL00&cgid=women-pants)

 

“Uh...spicy, you said?”

 

“Yes, spicy is the right answer,” Clara laughs. “You never wear casual in public, so the[ red t-shirt](https://www.uniqlo.com/us/en/men-supima-cotton-v-neck-short-sleeve-t-shirt-404137.html?dwvar_404137_color=COL29#start=26&cgid=men-t-shirts) game with the [jeans](https://www.uniqlo.com/us/en/men-slim-fit-jeans-414653.html?dwvar_414653_color=COL66&cgid=men-jeans) you got going is spicy.”

 

Tony's eyes crinkle. “Is that what you call spicy?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Is that just something kids say these days?” 

 

“No, it’s what  _ I _ say. “

 

"Very interesting choice of words."

 

Clara simply hums with a playful smirk. “We have a plane to catch. Let’s hop to it.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony and Clara are in Hokkaido, and who knows for how long considering they're on the run. Plus, Clara gets some really shitty news via finding that warehouse where there was supposed to be an antidote. But hey, she gets to see an iconic place on the way, iconic at least for Hokkaido

It’s only four hours, and that is pretty easy for them considering the last flight which was more like seventeen or so. 

 

The airport was southwest of Sapporo, so they never actually got to go there, instead of heading northeast to what was probably a shack in the middle of nowhere, if Clara assumed correctly, except she wouldn’t know until she got there. 

 

The car was big enough, but still kinda small, but it was only another hour or so from New Chitose International Airport to the middle of nowhere, so the redhead could handle it. She snacked on Japanese candy they bought at the airport, gulped down some water before she spoke. “What do we have, ten, fifteen minutes until we get there?”

 

“Uh, actually five,” Tony answers, taking a turn. 

 

“Wow, really?” Clara leans forward and pays a bit more attention to the Japanese scenery. Currently, it’s somewhat cloudy, the sun running into a thick cloud, at the moment. Japan is kinda boring at the exact second, but it’s only because they’re kinda on the run, not a vacation. However, Clara is pretty sure that one of the destinations she wanted to go to was only thirty minutes from the supposed “safe house”. 

 

“Yeah, it should be up here. It’s desolate enough for a safe house and I see tons of dirt roads-” Tony turns onto a new path. “Like the dirt road, we have just driven onto.”

 

Clara’s eyes trail around, observing the oddly green area dotted with trees. It didn’t feel that much like Japan in this minuscule area considering how big Japan itself was. It was almost like a northeastern U.S field, or something, but then, you see the Japanese road signs and she definitely remembers this is not the United States of America. 

 

It’s a medium-size house in appearance, Clara sees a few minutes forwards. Her head is cocked and eyes perplexed at the modern style of the place, white color, and a black Japanese-traditional roof. Not so discreet for a safe house, to her eyes, but at least it looks like a cool place. 

 

Tony parks the car outside in the back since it obviously doesn’t have a garage. The two exit the vehicle, finding a door on the place’s right side. Inside is void of people, as it should be. Traditional furniture surrounds the place, at least one sofa that’s definitely not native to Japanese culture, and there’s one TV in sight so they’re not completely without a possible form of entertainment that isn’t on her phone and laptop. It’s bland, no decor, considering this is not an American or European establishment. Japanese culture is known to be a minimalist paradise. 

 

Clara skips the living room and finds one of two bedrooms, a sigh of relief filling an otherwise quiet space. “Thank god there’s a bed, I thought there wouldn’t be because a lot of Japanese sleep on the floor.”

 

Tony peeks into the room across from her, a bed in there as well. “Yeah, I wouldn’t have been fond of sleeping on the floor after all this time.” He finds the bathroom connected to his room, observing the small shower, countertop, and toilet. “Your bathroom has all the necessities, shower, sink, toilet, right?”

 

“Yeah, it does!” Clara calls back. She walks back out without her bags but is heading to the door. 

 

Tony is pure confusion. “Uh, where ya goin’?”

 

“We have to check out that warehouse, I gotta get rid of this shit that makes me glow like a lightsaber! Don’t get me wrong, I love it, but that kills people!”

 

“Is your energy endless or-”

 

“I think it’s an extra effect of the injection, but I’m usually this energetic, so I have no clue, maybe it’s ‘cause I’ll occasionally drink a RedBull because it’s like ‘fuck, I have school tomorrow and it’s four a.m-no, not tomorrow, in two hours’ so I have to chug down caffeine in privacy and-” Clara dramatically rambles. 

 

“Do you ever sleep beside the plane ride?”

 

“Surprisingly, yeah.”

 

“You’re blowing my mind for the eightieth time in three days.”

 

Clara smirks. “What’re the other seventy-nine times?” She walks out the door without looking at him. The redhead pops back into the shotgun seat and she turns her head to see Tony Stark sitting in the driver’s seat. “Thanks for sticking with me. I don’t think I’d be a good driver, I’ll probably run into a tree or flip a car five times.”

 

Tony doesn't even have the will to look at the kid. “Sure,” He replies as he starts the car and heads off with the directions to the warehouse on his phone projected to the air. 

 

Within fifteen minutes, they find it. As odd as it was, it was an easy find. Clara gets out of the car but is practically running to the side, Tony immediately cautious and whisper-shouts her name. 

 

The redhead teen ignores him, peeking her head inside a gap in a door to see anything at all. Her left hand glows blue before she recklessly decides to slam her other fist against the door and stances herself to shoot but sees absolutely nothing. 

 

Tony sprints up right behind her because he knows someone is probably going to shoot her, regardless of this warehouse being supposedly “empty”. He couldn’t be too careful. However, no one has shot her, and she runs further forward inside, coercing him inside as well, but it’s deserted. 

 

“Someone could have shot you!”

 

“No one is here!” Clara snaps back. “Besides, if I died, wouldn’t have that been your blessing?”

 

Tony’s frustration has skyrocketed to Pluto because those words and the images that come along with them are beyond horrifying. If there is her body with a pool of blood behind her head, Tony doesn’t know if he could walk away from that. “Why the fuck are you so hell-bent on me having absolutely nothing to do with your life!”

 

Clara viciously sweeps around. “Because why the fuck should you be obligated to take care of me after fourteen years of knowing me?! Why should I, all of a sudden, get the whole wide world from someone and it’s just a shitty thing to deal with-you have a teenage daughter you didn’t choose to have! Yeah, I want love and support and a home, but not from someone who doesn’t need or want me, I want it from someone who’s gonna adopt me-”

 

“I am adopting you!”

 

Clara’s face usually lit like a star is the dark depth of the ocean from chin to her hairline. Why would he want anything to do with her? Why should he want anything to do with her, a fourteen-year-old girl, when he has a girlfriend and everything else good in his life?

 

Tony’s face gains more pain in its expression as he kinda hears his heart thud in his ear and there’s this slight shaking in his left arm. “God, I can’t become my dad,” He whispers to himself, eyes to the side. They turn back to his daughter, though, face so mournfully confused. “My dad never loved me or did anything for me, Clara, it would take even more than hell raining down on me to stop me from becoming what he was-a monster, a monster who never told me he loved me or even liked me.” His voice decreases in volume. “I wanna give you the world.”

 

Clara is gaping, yet still, a hole between her un-exfoliated lips that are usually a little pinker or are underneath matte liquid lipstick. All she craves is a hug, contact, touch, something, right now, but she knows she’ll never have someone to go to for that, maybe except Mei Xing. God, she wants her best friend-her sister. If she has someone, she has her sister, and she wants her more than anything in this very moment in time. If it was a fairytale, she would try with Stark...but that’s not what he deserves. She doesn’t deserve love, even if she  _ does _ want it, even if she would accept such a thing from him. 

 

Clara faces the other way, thinking that just walking away could alleviate this. She hears her father ask her to be careful with a “honey” at the front, but she doesn’t respond. Instead, she finds destroyed computers, manilla folders, dirt, dust, are those blood stains on the ground?

 

The redhead kneels down onto the ground without her knees or pants touching the dirt, gathering all the manilla folders into her arms and putting them down onto a random surface she scouts out. Clara opens them all, observing every single fact printed in black ink. Experiments, reports, mostly things she can’t comprehend are on these papers. But then she finds the only one that matters. 

 

What does it say?

 

Oh, nothing, just that they made an antidote, but then decided to destroy its formula and all traces of the creation. 

 

Clara heavily sighs. Another thing to mortify her out of her mind. “Lovely,” She mumbles to herself. 

 

“Clara? ...Honey?”

 

The teenager swallows as Tony is stepping closer to her. “I can’t get rid of this,” She says in a dark, crestfallen voice. “It’s over for me.”

 

“What’s over for you?”

 

“I’m Wanda Maximoff. I may be more powerful than Wanda Maximoff. They should take me to prison, shouldn’t they?”

 

“No, God, no, Clara, you haven’t done anything wrong,” Tony immediately contradicts her. 

 

“But what about when I do?”

 

“That’s not going to happen-”

 

“How would you know that?” Clara scoffs. “No one would.”

 

“Well, so far, it looks like you can control what you’ve got just fine,” Tony reports his observation. 

 

The aqua’s glow is morphing around in her palms, a gently glowing substance in her hands. “It’s no excuse.”

 

“There’s no excuses, there’s just the facts, and there’s the fact that I know you’re not going to do anything wrong, and you’re never going to be in the situation where people would think you’d screw up.”

 

Again, she heavily breathes out. “You can keep telling yourself that...But I don’t know for sure.”

 

“Well, maybe I can extract it.”

 

Clara shrugs. “Don’t know.”

 

Tony’s eyes shift around. “There’s nothing here...I guess we’ll go back to the safe house.”

  
  


All Clara could do was be on her computer, not even able to message Mei Xing because she knew sending things could probably be tracked. 

 

Her mind is dark, really, but maybe the vines on Youtube would cover it up? She wasn’t really sure, but it contracted some chuckles, so far. So the next vine. The next. The next after the next vine. 

 

That made the night.

 

Hunger came as her enemy the next morning. They were complete dumbasses and found no food before or after arriving at the safe house, so they have to ride in the car back to civilization to find something good to eat, Clara freshly showered and makeup-ed, dressed in a bright red ribbed tee shirt and white high-waist jeans, Tony in the exact same shirt as yesterday, but in blue, and another pair of the same jeans. 

 

“I can’t believe I am at an actual Japanese fast food place across from Tony Stark who is chomping down a burger,” Clara says at barely audible volume in the booth of a Freshness Burger twenty minutes away from the safe house that took them forever to find. 

 

“Wow. This is a really good burger.”

 

Clara hums, taking a bit of her more plain one. “They’re good,” She nonchalantly agrees. “Hey, you know what’s around here?”

 

“What’s around here?”

 

“Unkai Terrace.”

 

“Un-what?” Tony blinks mid-bite of his food. 

 

“It’s just a really pretty view,” Clara mildly explains. “Wanna go see it?” She asks with hope. 

 

“Why?”

 

“Because it has a really pretty view,” The redhead repeats herself. 

 

Tony shrugs, his posture relaxed. “If you want to, kiddo.”

 

That is how Tony ends up walking a lotta steps to a Japanese terrace, but he had to agree with his daughter about the view. 

 

The Japanese mountains are not quite a lush green, but still stunning, without a doubt, and the sun is shining vibrantly with no clouds stopping the star from attacking the Earth with both solar radiation and just enough heat to keep them alive. 

 

“Told you,” Clara smirks. 

 

Tony sighs. “Yeah, I gotta agree with you, kiddo. Beautiful view.”

 

“You owe me ten bucks.”

 

Realistically, he knows that he owes her a lifetime of love, happiness, money that goes towards anything she needs, and a home, but Tony doesn’t say such thing out loud to escalate the tension towards the subject. 

 

She sighs. “How long is this going to last?”

 

“I don’t know,” Tony answers quickly, but quietly. “Could be weeks. Obadiah won’t stop.”

 

“Mei Xing must think I’m dead.”

 

“Well, you’re not...I’m gonna get you home.”

 

Clara doesn’t know what to say, so all she does is nod, hazel green eyes still towards the Hokkaido’s mountains. “It’s funny we’re not in Shanghai. That’s where Mei Xing’s grandparents are from. It was not a place they wanted to stay in, even though family and culture was there, so they left and made their way to the east coast, had their kids, made a living. It’s a pretty good story if you ask me. In China, I heard that there’s no set tax limit, but they expect you to always be paying lots, so you’re taxing more out of fear. It gives their government too much power over the people...I’ve heard they’ll even detain people for six months, make others think they’re dead, if they didn’t pay enough. It’s shitty. I’m glad Mei Xing isn’t there. No one talks about the bad things that China does. There’s even internment camps for Muslims, it’s so sick.”

 

Tony’s eyes are still. “I didn’t know that.”

 

“I wouldn’t expect you to. Maybe one day I can do something to change the way the government works there, though...There’s countless human rights abuses, and if you mention anything too horrifically specific about their animal rights abuses I might have a full mental breakdown for two days straight,” Clara finishes her last sentence in a way that makes it sound like she’s going to cry, but there are no tears in her eyes. “I mean, like, if I get the good career, maybe I can do relations. They have good schools for that if I get scholarships because, well, I’m dead broke,” Clara laughs her last two words.

 

Um, well, her biological father is a billionaire, but sure, she’s broke. 

 

“I could always go to Georgetown and live in D.C like I already do, they’re some of the best. Harvard or Yale is quite far from reach, but I could always do it, if I wanted to There’s always ones with big acceptance rates, like Belmont, or I could always go to Southern Methodist in Dallas...I don’t know. Or I don’t get the good career, maybe I get a degree in something and work small. Something that has a consistent salary, I shouldn’t care what it is, right?”

 

“If...you wanna go to a great school, you don’t have to worry about money.”

 

Clara looks him dead in the eye. “No donating buildings to get me in or any dumbass cheating shit.”

 

“God, no, I would never do that! All I’m saying is that if it’s a fifty-thousand-dollar-a-year-tuition, you don’t have an issue with paying for it, all you need to worry about is getting in!”

 

Clara sighs. “If I don’t have to have financial aid, then that means it goes to someone else….Who knows, I-I can’t think too much about college right now.”

 

“You shouldn’t, you have four years.”

 

The redhead shrugs. “No, I have to start thinking and doing in two. It’s a lengthy process.”

 

“Well, I know you can get into any school you dream of.”

 

Clara scoffs. “Because I’m your kid?”

 

“No, because you’re your mom’s daughter.”

 

A gape grows between Clara’s vaseline-glazed lips, but quickly shuts back with a slight smack of the balm. To the best of her ability, she pushes the thoughts of all the places she could go away, her eyes of adoration still at the Japanese mountains. 

 

Her eyes are definitely not so adoring when Tony tells her that Fury messaged them, saying they had to move again to Georgia. No, not Georgia the state, but the country, plus a layover in New Delhi, India, the most dangerous city in the world for women's sexual assault. 


End file.
